Sometimes, why not slow it down?
What’s the rush?
A pair of climbers raced up Yosemite’s El Capitan Sunday in a
blazing assault that lasted just 2 hours, 47 minutes and 30
seconds, the second-fastest climb ever, and one just 2
½ minutes slower than the record.
Sometimes, why not slow it down?
What’s the rush?
A pair of climbers raced up Yosemite’s El Capitan Sunday in a blazing assault that lasted just 2 hours, 47 minutes and 30 seconds, the second-fastest climb ever, and one just 2 ½ minutes slower than the record.
Entering Yosemite Valley, El Capitan stands prominently on the left flank, the world’s largest single chunk of granite. It soars 2,900 feet vertically to a summit elevation of 7,569 feet.
The first climbers to carry themselves from base to summit did so in 1958, but they took a little more time. Warren Harding, Wayne Merry and George Whitmore ate, slept and lived on the monolith for 47 days.
Speed climbers Hans Florine of Lafayette and Yuji Hirayama of Japan planned to make another go at the record for climbing El Cap’s Nose Route on Wednesday, after the Pinnacle’s deadline.
Climbing the wall in any amount of time is the accomplishment of a lifetime for a handful of the sport’s most elite. Twenty-four people have died on the rock since 1905.
It’s hard to conjure the size of the rock. The scale of so many things in Yosemite Valley is vast enough to trick the eye. But when climbers are spotted on the wall, they are seen as minute specks. There’s a climbing subset that races up walls on ropes already placed from the top, using cam devices called ascenders. It’s kind of like climbing a 2,900-foot rope ladder. Their efforts begin at the base and standing as they winch themselves up the rope without going anywhere. Climbing ropes are designed with the smallest amount of stretch, to ease the shock of a fall. But the distance to the top of El Capitan is so great, that before ascending, climbers have to climb out of all that stretch.
Florine and Hirayama were confident that they would recapture the speed record they held from 2002 until last October, when brothers Thomas and Alexander Huber of Germany set the record that escaped this week’s climbers.
In the rarefied world of big wall climbing, the climbers who do it fastest are an elite subset.
But why? What’s the rush?
It’s our nature to compete, to go higher, farther, faster than others at whatever we do.
But does climbing a mountain 150 seconds faster than the last guys to do it really matter?
Perhaps I ask because of my own stage in life. I used to feel helpless to my urge to reel in a bicyclist when one appeared far ahead of me on a country road. Now, I’m content, even when I’m passed. I’ll even stop to admire a view, or to explore something worthy of attention. Occasionally I’ll pack binoculars so I can combine birds and bikes.
Certainly part of that is because I am no longer capable of catching some of the young Turks out there. But part of it stems from an understanding that was late in coming.
John Muir wrote a century ago of watching life’s little dramas unfold by just holding still for a while. Whenever I show enough sense to take that advice, and to slow down, I’m amazed at what goes on around us, usually unseen.
I recall watching bobcat kittens playing and wrestling near me, or of watching another bobcat stalk rabbits under an abandoned cabin. I think of the times birds have returned to going about their business. Once, as I rested alone next to a Sierra creek, a fisher danced down a fallen log to the water’s edge. Our eyes locked and we shared something indescribable for a moment.
Florine and Hirayama are certainly enjoying their adventure, its risks and the adulation of their community.
I’ll enjoy mine my own way.
