Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson are back in Yosemite for the Fall season to have another go at their well documented project on El Capitan’s Dawn Wall*.
In anticipation of this, Climbing sat down with the duo for a lengthy interview that is featured on the cover of the current issue of Climbing. You can download a raw transcript of the interview here, and despite its length I found the entire thing quite fascinating. Hearing directly from Tommy & Kevin one can learn more about their tactics, their motivations, how they will define success and their feelings about all the publicity this as of yet unclimbed route is getting.
Kevin Jorgeson & Tommy Caldwell on the cover of Climbing No. 289
So far the season has gotten off to somewhat of a slow start with storms and hot weather adding to the already high level of difficulty associated with climbing multiple 5.13 and 5.14 pitches on a big wall like El Cap. Writing on his blog Jorgeson details how the pair has been approaching their early season work on the route:
Despite the seasonal early October storm, the weather has remained warm (80’s!), far too hot to work on these tough pitches in the daylight. This was no surprise however. We planned on doing a lot of night climbing this season and that’s exactly what we’ve been doing. About 4pm every day, the wall goes into the shade. We’ll eat a big dinner and rappel off Wino Tower to work on the 4 pitches below us (pitch 16: 5.14, pitch 17: 5.13c, pitch 18: 5.13c or d and pitch 19: 5.13c). Climbing at night has worked out great. It’s quiet, cool, and time seems to stand still. Hours will pass in the solitude of your headlamp and thoughts before arriving back at Wino Tower sometime in the middle of the night.
The plan is to continue working on pitches, including the crux traverse pitches that directly precede the dyno pitch Jorgeson blogged about above, before hopefully attempting a long ground up push some time late in the season. I’ll be sure to keep you posted as things develop.
Mescalito/Dawn Wall Topo (click to make bigger)
*Long referred to as the Mescalito project, the pair seems to prefer calling it the Dawn Wall project since the climb wanders all over that area on the East Face of El Cap looking for rock that can be free climbed.
What a proud project! I’m inspired every time this comes up in the news.
So psyched for these guys, and I hope they succeed.
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Very awesome to read the transcript thanks for posting it Narc, even at 35 pages it went by quickly, nice to have the full conversation and not just the magazine highlights. I wish there were more lengthy and free-form interviews like this available.
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I really hope they make a movie dedicated to this climb when/if they finally send it. It might be boring to some, but I would really enjoy following these guys through the cruxes of each pitch on a week-long haul up this thing.
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There are definitely going to be more media types up there with them this fall as they work on it. If they do wind up attempting a free push I have it on good authority that video will be most likely be captured then as well. Should be fun to watch.
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Headed to Yosemite this weekend. Hopefully the decide to climb during the day!
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Nice, have a great trip!
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