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Record Breaking Climb Of El Cap 6/6 ( Under 2 hrs)

Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2018 4:42 pm
by maverick

Re: Record Breaking Climb Of El Cap 6/6 ( Under 2 hrs)

Posted: Fri Jun 08, 2018 2:27 am
by gary c.
Hard to even imagine. I would love to have watched from the meadow though.

Re: Record Breaking Climb Of El Cap 6/6 ( Under 2 hrs)

Posted: Fri Jun 08, 2018 7:46 am
by longri
I don't think it's hard to imagine. They weren't actually moving at a rate limited by their aerobic capacity. That would be something closer to twice the speed. Many climbers can ascend that fast on easy terrain. It's just that the terrain on the Nose is "easy" for these guys. And they've got the all-important logistics optimized.

The record has been steadily chopped away at for years. But what's a little surprising is that it hasn't gotten into that final, asymptotic mode where the improvements get steadily smaller, as in other athletic speed events. The game hasn't reached full maturity yet. These guys beat the previous record holders (from just last year -- see the video below) by a whopping 15%. So while nobody expects the record to go down to an hour, it's not entirely clear what the limits are. Or what the costs might be.

I've watched the record get broken before. It's fun to see in person but actually not that great as a spectator sport. The action is too far away and it's all just a bit too methodical. Although once I watched an attempt where one of the guys slipped and nearly took a huge fall.

It's a little more entertaining to watch it as a time-lapse movie. Here's the previous record holder's run (the action begins at around 1:50):

https://vimeo.com/264661267


The Warriors are on tonight. I'm not even a basketball fan but I think it will be more fun to watch them on TV than a speed climb from El Cap Meadow.

Re: Record Breaking Climb Of El Cap 6/6 ( Under 2 hrs)

Posted: Fri Jun 08, 2018 10:03 am
by maverick
The Warriors are on tonight. I'm not even a basketball fan but I think it will be more fun to watch them on TV than a speed climb from El Cap Meadow.
Go Warriors!!!

Re: Record Breaking Climb Of El Cap 6/6 ( Under 2 hrs)

Posted: Fri Jun 08, 2018 4:10 pm
by Tom_H
Not mentioned in the article is that Honnold is the only person ever to free solo El Cap, doing so in 2017 in 3 hr.56 min.

Re: Record Breaking Climb Of El Cap 6/6 ( Under 2 hrs)

Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2018 5:26 pm
by limpingcrab
For the climbers out there, if you were to pitch it out instead of simulclimbing and short fixing, that would be about 4 minutes per pitch. I feel like I'm moving fast at 30 minutes per pitch of moderate climbing!

As a matter of fact I'd probably have a hard time hiking 3000 vertical feet on trail in under two hours right now :/

Re: Record Breaking Climb Of El Cap 6/6 ( Under 2 hrs)

Posted: Tue Jun 12, 2018 7:25 am
by longri
Yeah, but that's because so much time is spent "not-climbing" when you pitch everything out. It's one of the downsides of standard rock climbing: there's so much standing around time. Between dealing with the belays, placing/cleaning gear on the route, and belaying your partner you spend maybe 1/6 of the time actually making climbing moves, possibly less.

I'm a gumby and I've climbed the Royal Arches in a little over an hour. That included stopping to take a rock out of my shoe, looking confusedly at the topo a couple of times, and peeing. I think the Arches are about half the vertical gain of The Nose, albeit a lot easier climbing. In terms of scooting up a trail I've walked up to Yosemite Point in under 90 minutes a number of times, no running required. That's around 3000 feet I think. I think I could do that in an hour if I worked at it.

Real athletes would zip by me in a flash. Consider that the Half Dome trail run record is 1:27. That's about 6000 feet of gain. And the Royal Arches record is under an hour car-to-car!

The limits on how fast The Nose (or similar El Cap route) could be climbed is an interesting question. If you strung a top rope and let people climb with a self-belay I'll bet we'd see times close to an hour right now. I TR soloed the Nabisco Wall in about 25 minutes, something that has taken me half a day with a partner. But then a Nose top rope would be a different contest, wouldn't it?

Re: Record Breaking Climb Of El Cap 6/6 ( Under 2 hrs)

Posted: Tue Jun 12, 2018 8:10 am
by Tom_H
longri wrote: But then a Nose top rope would be a different contest, wouldn't it?
HaHa! I'm sitting here thinking through that. First of all, 3,000' feet of rope would weigh what? Four hundred pounds or so? Ok, top belay partner must control an electric winch rather than pull uprope himself. Oh,yea, how will he hear me call uprope, slack, tension, etc.? God forbid I call falling and he can't hear me. Guess I'll need satellite radio inside my helmet. Sure hope the signal clears these granite walls. I'm on a south face and the birds (satellites) should be always behind me. Maybe that'll work o.k. Let's see, if I'm a hundred feet up and fall, with 2900' of rope above me, I'll probably hit the ground before the elasticity is stretched out. So I need something like a rappel rope with just a little stretch to it. Oh, but what if I'm 400' from the top with 40' of slack and I fall? Hmmm....now this rope with very little stretch is going to snap my spine as soon as the slack plays out. And I don't even want to imagine how far I could pendulum on this thing. I could probably hit an outcrop at a hundred mph on a really good swing.

A different contest? Yea, one I wouldn't try even if I were a world class climber.

Re: Record Breaking Climb Of El Cap 6/6 ( Under 2 hrs)

Posted: Tue Jun 12, 2018 9:02 am
by longri
That's funny, but of course not the way you'd do it. You'd have lines anchored every couple of hundred feet and you'd belay yourself with a ratcheting device like the Petzl Mini-traxion. People often use two so there's a semblance of a backup in play. It takes only a few moments to transition from one line to the next.

There is a group that does hang a single uninterrupted line down the face of El Cap. They do it at a point where it overhangs the whole way. They take turns rappelling the line. Quite a fun ride I imagine (you can find videos on youtube). They also jumar up it. I think the ascend record is something like 45 minutes but these guys aren't exactly world class athletes.

Re: Record Breaking Climb Of El Cap 6/6 ( Under 2 hrs)

Posted: Tue Jun 12, 2018 11:40 am
by Tom_H
A 3,000" free rappel. Now I could get into that. I never was a great climber. 5.8 was about the limit of my ability, but loved simply jumping off overhangs and popping the brake just before getting to the bottom. I fell out of a treehouse at 7 y.o. and broke my back (one of numerous insane things I did that almost killed me). When I started climbing in my early 20s, I was still a bit nervous because of the treehouse incident. Rappelling is the thing that got me comfortable with exposure.