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Dawn Wall Push Underway
Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson returned to Yosemite over a month ago to resume work on their Dawn Wall free climbing project on Yosemite's El Capitan. Unfortunately, Kevin is out for the season with an ankle injury, but that didn't stop Tommy from continuing to prepare for a push later in the season.
The time for the push came last Saturday as Caldwell set off up the wall with wife Becca in support.
Over the course of Saturday and Sunday he freed pitches 1 through 9 putting several 5.13 and one of the 5.14 pitches behind him. With the crux of the route forthcoming—five of the next six pitches are 5.14—Caldwell took a rest day yesterday and he should be back at it today.
Dawn Wall Project topo - Click to enlarge
Fortunately, Jorgeson's embracing of social media has rubbed off on Caldwell and we can follow updates from the wall, straight from Caldwell himself, on his Facebook fan page. You'll also find the updates pulled straight into this site's sidebar for further convenience.
Best of luck to Tommy!!
Update: I forgot to be more explicit in mentioning this when I first posted this, but Tom Evans has many pictures and updates from Tommy's push thus far on his excellent El Cap Report.
7 comments
Tom has some pretty cool photos of Tommy on the El Cap Report:
http://www.elcapreport.com/content/elcap-report-102911
http://www.elcapreport.com/content/elcap-report-103011
The climbing looks really cool! Not just blank heinous slabs!
As a side note the Hans/Honnold nose run should be starting within the hour!
El Cap needs a web cam
From http://elcapreport.com/content/elcap-report-102911
"Aid climbers, over the past several weeks have changed the route a bit
and key holds are gone. However he worked out other combinations and
for the 13+ and 14- pitches."
As if it wasn't hard enough already...
That seems kinda effed up. I couldn't see myself even touching that route with anything but skin and shoe rubber knowing Tommy was working to free it. Inconsiderate? I'm not familiar with aid climbing ethics . . .
I would say that anything that removes holds from the rock, regardless of the ethics of your particular discipline, is wrong.
Clearly you don't know aid climbing. Aid climbers seem to feel entitled to do what ever they want where ever they want to get to the top of top of the route. That's why people are still pounding pins on routes that have gone clean for over a decade.
Becca: Is that Beth Rodden belaying?