After that super productive government shutdown kept our national parks closed for over two weeks, Tommy Caldwell, Kevin Jorgeson and Chris Sharma1 made their way to the Valley for another season of efforts to free a line up the Dawn Wall2 on El Cap.
With the delayed start it remains to be seen if they will have enough time on the route before the weather shuts the season down3, but that hasn’t stopped the team from putting in some good work thus far. Here’s a series of photo and video updates posted by Kevin Jorgeson to his Facebook page that’ll give you a glimpse of their progress thus far. What does everyone think, will this be the year the Dawn Wall gets freed??
Post by Kevin Jorgeson.
Post by Kevin Jorgeson.
Post by Kevin Jorgeson.
Post by Kevin Jorgeson.
Post by Kevin Jorgeson.
Post by Tommy Caldwell.
Post by Kevin Jorgeson.
- Jonathan Siegrist, who had intended on being part of the team this season, made a power move to the East Coast during the shutdown and chose to remain there the rest of the season ↩
- Complete with its own Twitter account this year ↩
- Previous years’ attempts have ended around November 20th in 2010 and November 22nd in 2011 ↩
Here’s what i’m curious about why don’t they get to the valley earlier in the fall. Each year they show up beginning of oct then they get stormed off the route by the end of the month. Why not get there earlier and climb at night. Seems counterproductive for such a huge project to try it for a month a year.
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How much night climbing have you done? It sucks the psyche out of you really quickly. Not to mention humidity is higher at night, so you don’t stick as well.
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Also, it should be noted how physically brutal it is for these guys to be up there. From previous season’s reports, it sound like by the time they get stormed off in late November, they are too broken down to really have much try hard left in them. Trying to keep up fitness for three months while up there just wouldn’t be practical. As such, if they showed up in September, they would probably just be too wrecked by the time the temps got good; better to show up for the peak season only.
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The temps are too hot in September, thus they have to wait until later. November can still be a really good month on El Cap.
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Anything 5.13+ generally needs good weather conditions. Also they are climbing a lot of 5.13s, 14s… etc… That just can’t happen if the conditions aren’t right.
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So I’m just wondering how the team up there is viewing “sending” the Dawn Wall. Is the goal that at least one climber of the team frees every pitch in one push up the wall? I’m assuming that if they fall on a pitch that doesn’t mean that sending the wall is ruined, but that they would lower and try the pitch again?
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That’s my understanding from previous years.
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