El Cap Speed Record on Sunkist
Two days after linking up El Cap and Half Dome in a day, I partnered up with Lance Coley and we set our sights on a route called Sunkist left of the Shield Headwall on the Southwest Face of El Cap. My friend John Bolte had first told me about the route, and we had talked about potentially climbing it wall style over multiple days. That plan never came to be and when Lance suggested we go for the route in a push, I excitedly agreed. I led the first 15 pitches of the route in just over 3 hours before passing over the lead to Lance as the sound of hammer on iron began to resonate up the wall. The headwall of Sunkist contains a spitter seam that goes on for hundreds of feet and splits an otherwise blank golden granite face… a wall climber's dream! After 9 pitches of beaking, Lance had only one more to go till I was to take back over the lead. Lance quested up the razor thin seam that ended in a rivet ladder but just before the first rivet, a fixed aluminum head (A piece of metal that was hammered into a seam with a cable on it) broke and Lance went airborne. I heard “take!” followed by bing, bing, bing, the sound of beaks popping out of the wall as Lance fell 45 feet and was caught by the smallest beak on our rack. The fall was violent, and Lance came to rest fully starfished in the air, well below me at the belay. He mentioned that his back hurt but he pulled back up on lead like a boss, pasted 3 more heads into the seam and we both screamed of joy when he clipped that first 1/4” rivet. Lance passed off the next lead to me and I quested up an easy but terrifying pitch of A3+ heads, known as the A5 Arch. As I inched my way up 10 or so head placements in a row, I equalized as many as I could so that my weight was never on a single one in order to avoid the fate that Lance had just met. I climbed two more pitches of sustained beaks and asked Lance if he wouldn’t mind taking over as my head needed a break. Lance led the last A3 pitch in the dark then I took out the free shoes and led the last two to the summit. Our time on route was 15:57 which is over 3 hours faster than the previous record held by the legends Steve Schnieder, Hans Florine, and Mark Melvin from 1999. We stumbled down the east ledges and made it back to the road after midnight to a very delicious baked ziti and surprise ride back to the meadow from Lances’ girlfriend Heather.
March 2024 Afterward
Lance ended up breaking his back during that fall but continued going on search and rescue missions and carry outs as an active member on YOSAR until he finally went to the hospital where they discovered a fracture. Lance then spent the next month or so in a back brace.
