Two New Speed Records on El Cap
Magic Mushroom
Apparently, this past Sunday was National Mushroom day which coincided quite nicely with a single day ascent of "Magic Mushroom" with Brandon Adams and Jim Raynolds. This route does go free at 5.14a but being that we are mere mortals, we opted instead to bring iron, hammers, and a speaker to "aid" us up the route. This wall was my first time proper aid climbing in a couple years and while I felt quite rusty at first, I eventually fell back into the grove of hammering in beaks and stepping high in ladders. It felt pretty amazing to be back up there swinging around in free space with iron clinking on the harness and ropes flying horizontally. Jim took the first block of mixed free and aid up to the Grey Ledges but we let a coin toss decide the fate of the next two. Brandon's fate consisted of the middle block of incredibly steep, exposed, and often awkward headwall pitches and mine brought us to the summit from the top of pitch 22 after a little bit of A3 which had me hanging on hooks and more copper heads than I'm used to. Overall, the day felt pretty relaxed and vibes were pretty great being up there as a party of 3. We did in fact knock around 6 hours of the speed record with a time of 14:37 but I just don't think this thing get done too frequently in a push.
Fun fact: this route was put up in 1972 by Hugh Burton (age 17) and Steve Sutton (age 19) who somehow managed to accidentally lite their haul bag on fire mid route with some self igniting matches. Wild.
New Dawn
All of my climbing this season in Yosemite has occurred solely on Saturdays and Sundays but just a few days after the Triple, I asked my boss if I could take a day off to get in an extra lap on El Cap that same week. I got the go ahead and spent part of last Thursday attempting to rack up via text with Miles Fullman and Brandon Adams since I was driving into the Valley late that evening. We racked up for real in the morning and hiked to the base of “New Dawn” which climbs the tallest part of El Cap, better known as the Dawn Wall.
I took the first block of the route which contains a mix of sustained aid interspersed between fun free climbing that brought us past the luxurious Lay Lady Ledge. During our Thursday texts, I wrote that I thought I could get by with a single #3, #4, and #5 cam despite the topo suggesting 3 off each. It turned out I completely sandbagged myself as both pitches from Lay Lady to El Cap Tower contained ample amounts of overhanging and splitter wide climbing.
I passed off the lead to Brandon who began a series of pitches that climb old rivet ladders that inspire little confidence being that the hangers typically never even stayed on the rivets once unweighted. We brought a drill bit in case a rivet blew out but luckily the only fall that went down all day occurred during a lower out when a piece of tat broke on a 200’ straight horizontal pitch and I went flying into a surprise pendulum. Shortly after, Miles opted to take an intentional pendulum on the fully free hanging haul line swinging a hundred or so feet side to side. We eventually made it to Wino Tower where we had a few minutes to scarf down a burrito we hauled up.
Miles took over with limited laylight to spare and just as he was closing in on the famous Harding roof, we got to see some friends taking big rides on the porch swing. Not too many minutes later, a base jumper flew directly over us.
We topped out after 16 hours and 45 minutes knocking 7 hours off the previous record and all feeling a sense that we had quite an adventure up there. It’s pretty wild how “out there” one can feel while so close to the road. I guess that really is what makes El Cap so unique.
