Yosemite Climbing Exhibit

Yosemite National Park has long been the crucible of American rock climbing. Yosemite Valley, or The Valley as locals call it, is a mythic climbing area. Here are the famed big walls—El Capitan, Half Dome, Sentinel Rock, and Washington Column—as well as stellar crack climbs. It was here that both crack climbing and big wall climbing techniques were developed, refined, and perfected.

The Yosemite Museum at Yosemite National Park is featuring, from now until October 27, a 1,000-square-foot exhibit called Granite Frontiers: A Century of Yosemite Climbing. The exhibit, organized by veteran Valley climbers Ken Yager and Mike Corbett, features lots of interesting historic artifacts gleaned from Yager’s collection of 10,000 Yosemite climbing objects. Some of the displayed stuff includes a RURP (Realized Ultimate Reality Piton) used by Royal Robbins when he soloed the Muir Wall in 1968; Lynn Hill’s climbing shoes from her landmark 1993 free ascent of El Cap’s Nose; and two of the famous “Stoveleg” pitons, made from a wood stove’s legs, that were used on the first ascent of the Nose in 1958. You’ll also find historical videos and photographs, as well as a granite wall where your kids can plug cams and wired nuts in cracks.

Yager and Corbett hope this exhibit is the first step in the eventual creation of a Yosemite rock climbing museum that will educate, memorialize, and celebrate the Valley’s great climbing heritage and history. A museum site next to historic Camp IV where the old Yosemite Lodge Gas Station was located was given to the Yosemite Climbing Association by the National Park Service. Good luck to them—the museum will be a great addition to American climbing. More information about the exhibit and the museum is at Yosemite Climbing Association. See ya out there in September.

Photo above: Jimmy Dunn and Andy Embick on the second ascent of the Heart Route on El Capitan in 1971.
Photograph © Jim Dunn Collection