Zodiac - El Capitan
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Topping out on the Zodiac route on the Southeast face of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park after four days of climbing.
Inspiration: Warren Harding, Royal Robbins, and Layton Kor - visionary and legendary climbers. El Capitan was unclimbable - until Warren Harding laid seige to the Nose route and climbed it - blowing away climbing's self imposed limitations. Royal Robbins' clean climbing ethics and style and his ascent of the overhanging SE face dropping the escape ropes, leaving the summit as the only option. Layton Kor's mind blowing first ascents, imperviousness to danger, and tenacity.
Idea: Standing in Yosemite meadow looking up in awe at El Cap - seeing tiny specks on the walls. What is it like to be hanging out in space two or three thousand feet off the deck?
Goal: Any climber standing before The Captain is either compelled to climb it or to reluctantly return to the smaller summits of the local crags.
Plan: A goal is a dream with a deadline. A plan is a goal with steps. After awestruck silence and exclamations laced with expletives, my climbing partner, Keith, and I spent a good part of our two weeks in Yosemite daydreaming and talking about and planning to climb El Cap. We would climb it the next summer.
Preparation: (a) Specialized knowledge: While Keith and I were quite knowledgeable about free climbing, we had little knowledge of aid climbing and big wall climbing. So we read everything we could get our hands on about aid and big wall climbing and talked to big wall climbers. (b) Tools: Aid climbing requires special tools (e.g., pitons, angles, bongs, bashies, RURP's, aiders, jumars, etc) so we bought the necessary tools. (c) Experience: We practiced aid climbing on local crags, attempted a wall climb in North Carolina, and did a short tune up wall climb in Yosemite.
Persistence: We failed on our first attempt on El Capitan, or rather, I failed. I bailed out at the base - too intimidated to even get on the rock. Keith and another climbing buddy climbed several pitches but decided to bail at the end of the day. I was depressed. I let down my climbing partner. I didn't measure up. It was a moment of truth and the truth was hard to swallow. I didn't return to Yosemite the next summer, nor the summer after that. I moved to Colorado. Keith stayed in South Carolina. I got married. Keith quit his engineering job and became a climbing bum. He went to Yosemite and lived in the parking lot of Camp 4. He climbed El Cap with the locals. Keith called and invited me to climb El Cap. He said that he and Matt were planning on climbing Zodiac. I was torn. I was busy at work and my wife was pregnant. I selfishly decided to go. Keith, Matt and I waited in line at the base of Zodiac. It had become a popular climb. We climbed and waited behind about 5 or 6 other parties. The other parties were bailing out and after two days we were alone at 1000 feet looking up at the overhanging 1000 feet above us. It was another moment of truth - the point at which Robbins dropped his land lines. We decided to keep going. Climbing an overhanging wall with three climbers is a blast. The first climber is the "leader" and places climbing gear in the rock. The second climber is the "second" or "follower" and removes the gear as he climbs up. The third climber rides the "pig" (haul bag) as it swings out from the wall until it is hanging vertically, then ascends (jumars) up the rope. Riding the pig as it swings out into space 1500 feet off the deck is a heart pounding and mind expanding experience. It was almost as exciting as when my home-made portaledge upon which I was sleeping broke in the middle of the pitch black darkness of the night dropping my legs into space with the rest of my body sliding down the now inclined portaledge. My slide was arrested by my tie-in slings and I leveled the portaledge and repaired it with duct tape and slings. A day of climbing in the rain and then the summit day which turned cold. Matt topped out. Keith jumared past me near the summit as I cleaned the last few pieces of gear. Finally, I climbed over the top and stood on the edge. I had just stepped from one world into another, ushered in by the climbing partner that I had let down a few years before. Keith, Matt and I had little time to celebrate on the summit, as a storm was moving in. We walked across the summit in the rain and down the side of the mountain back into the valley.
Partners: The level of trust and committment of climbing partners is unsurpassed, as your life is in your partners' hands and theirs in yours. I could not have climbed El Capitan without Keith and Matt.
