Though he had climbed El Capitan in a day–three times–twenty-two-year-old Cheyne Lempe spent the days leading up to his solo attempt on the Salathe Wall (VI 5.9 A2, 2,900′) trying not to puke out of the apprehension. “Tomorrow I’m going to try to climb the Salathe Wall on El Cap, in one day, by myself… Man, all those words in the same sentence just sounds… sounds like it’s going to be a lot of suffering….”
Two climbers recently rappelled the upper reaches of El Capitan to conduct a traditional “Nose Wipe.” They hauled out garbage by the bag-full, but an estimated 500 pounds of debris remains on Yosemite’s best-known route.
In just over 20 hours on November 6 and 7, Cheyne Lempe rope soloed the Salathe Wall (VI 5.9 A2, 2,900′, Frost-Prett-Robbins, 1961) of El Capitan, the fastest solo ascent of the route yet made. Shortly after finishing the climb, Lempe produced an edit of his time alone on the wall.
New Zealander Iain Burgon had climbed the Roggspitze a number of times before, but never alone and with a camera. Herein, his edit of the experience.
“Sean has bad case of diarrhea, Nico has bit of a sunstroke and is vomiting, Stephane has bad headache and Evrard has sore back. So nothing unusual to report really,” the four-man team wrote from Kyzyl Asker (5842m) on the Chinese-Kyrgyzstani border. And they hadn’t even started climbing.
