Two US citizens completed what had long been considered the world’s most difficult rock climb on Wednesday, using only their hands and feet to scale a 900m vertical wall on El Capitan, a granite pedestal in Yosemite National Park that has beckoned adventurers for more than 50 years.
Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson became the first to free-climb the rock formation’s Dawn Wall. They used ropes and safety harnesses to catch themselves in case of a fall, but relied on their own strength and dexterity to ascend by grasping cracks as thin as razor blades and as small as dimes.
The effort took 19 days, as the two dealt with constant falls and injuries.
Caldwell was the first to finish on Wednesday afternoon. He waited on a ledge for Jorgeson, who caught up minutes later. The two embraced before Jorgeson pumped his arms in the air and clapped his hands above his head. Then they sat down for a few moments, gathered their gear, changed clothes and hiked to the nearby summit.
The trek up the world’s largest granite monolith began on Dec. 27 last year. Caldwell and Jorgeson lived on the wall itself, eating and sleeping in tents fastened to the rock hundreds of meters above the ground and battling painful cuts to their fingertips much of the way.
Both needed to take rest days to heal. They used tape and superglue to help protect their skin.
At one point, Caldwell set an alarm to wake him every few hours to apply a special lotion to his hands.
They also endured physical punishment whenever their grips slipped, pitching them into long, swinging falls that left them bouncing off the rock face. The tumbles, which they called “taking a whipper,” ended with startling jolts from their safety ropes.
Caldwell, 36, and Jorgeson, 30, had help from a team of supporters who brought food and supplies and shot footage of the climb.
There are about 100 routes up the rock known among climbers as “El Cap,” and many have made it to the top, the first in 1958. Even the Dawn Wall had been scaled. Warren Harding and Dean Caldwell — no relation to Tommy — made it up in 1970, using climbing ropes and countless rivets over 27 days.
However, no one had made it to the summit in a continuous free-climb.
The ascent comes after five years of training and failed attempts for both climbers. They only got about a third of the way up in 2010 when they were turned back by storms. A year later, Jorgeson fell and broke an ankle in another attempt. Since then, each has spent time on the rock practicing and mapping out strategy.
John Long, the first person to climb El Capitan in a single day in 1975, said it was almost inconceivable that anyone could do something as “continuously difficult” as Caldwell and Jorgeson’s ascent.
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