There's been lots of climbing news made on El Capitan in Yosemite Valley in the last few month.
On November 6, Dean Potter and Sean Leary broke the speed record for climbing The Nose of El Cap by shaving a mere 20 seconds off the mark set by Hans Florine and Yuji Hirayama in October, 2008. The pair climbed the route in 2 hours, 36 minutes, and 45 seconds. So seconds do count. Hollywood Hans, of course, says he will return to reclaim the record.
In late September and October, Simon and Samuel Anthamatten, brothers and Swiss mountain guides, blitzed the Valley to "get more experienced in big wall climbing." In only a few weeks the Brothers Anthamatten speed-climbed what is usually a lifetime's worth of El Cap routes for most climbers, cranking off almost 33,000 vertical feet and bivouacking on El Cap only twice.
Their El Cap tick list was West Face; Lurking Fear; Zodiac; Tangerine Trip; Lost in America; North American Wall; Mescalito; The Nose; and The Salathe Wall. They also linked the Northwest Face of Half Dome and The Nose in 11 hours and 50 minutes.
Simon Anthamatten told the Italian website PlanetMountain: "All of the routes we did have much faster speed records, than our ascent. But our goal on this trip was to keep up-to-date with new climbing techniques. Places like Yosemite Valley are the birthplaces for developing climbing styles: aid climbing, free climbing, bouldering and now speed climbing have a huge history in Yosemite Valley. To learn a specific technique it's important to visit where it was developed, as this gives a much better understanding of the sense of the new climbing-style."
British climber Leo Houlding, partnered with Jason Pickles, finally climbed a new free route on El Capitan after several attempts that began in 2001. The new route, called The Prophet (5.13d), ascends 1,800 feet up the right wall of El Cap and links up several routes, including Bad to the Bone, The Secret Passage, and Eagle's Way.
On the second day the pair was thrashed by a fierce storm for two days. "There was nobody else on the wall," Houlding told PlanetMountain. "We were in a waterfall--in a flooded portaledge--unable to escape or be rescued. Just as it started to look like we would not be able to continue the storm cleared and we were able to dry all our gear." Leo said he was thankful that his shoes and chalk stayed dry in the deluge.
Photographs above: (Top) Leo Houlding cranking his new route The Prophet on El Cap. (Bottom) The Brothers Anthamatten know a good ole American brewski is perfect for El Cap summits. Photographs courtesy Anthamattens and Alaistar Lee/PlanetMountain.
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