In reply to brendonTendon:
"November 12 1958. Warren Harding, George Whitmore, and Wayne Merry are lashed to a hanging stance 3,150 feet up El Capitan. The days are cold and short, and already afternoon shadows streak up the wall towards them. They gaze overhead and wonder: Will we EVER get off? Will it EVER be over?
On this, their final push, the trio has been on the wall eleven days, twice as long as any American has ever spent on a rock climb. Below in the shadows lies a tale of forty-five pitches spread over eleven months, each day a pitched battle, every lead sieged. They've met obstacles no rock climber has ever seen, let alone mastered - wild pendulums, expanding flakes thin as flapjacks, plus the back-breaking task of hauling vast supplies up the cliff side. And now, only a 50-foot headwall bars them from the top of the mightiest rock wall in the contiguous United States. But that headwall, that last 50 feet, is dead blank and severely overhanging. They'll have to retreat 350 feet to Camp 6 and a good ledge, and tackle the headwall in the morning.
There comes a time in all great climbers' careers where technique or fitness or even genius falls short, when only brute willpower can close the deal. Harding considers his swollen hands, the mangled gear and frayed ropes, the rats that gnawed through haul bags, the rain and sleet and chilling retreats, his running feuds with rangers, the private terrors and sleepless nights and yet just now, hanging in a web of tattered slings, he can nearly spit to the top.
Warren Harding is not going down.
As darkness sets in, Harding starts bolting. And in an epic no climber should ever forget, he hammers through the night, finally punches home the twenty-eighth and last bolt, and stumbles to the top just as dawn spills into Yosemite Valley. The first ascent of The Nose, one of the greatest, and certainly the most sought-after pure rock climb in the world, is a done thing."
John Long, Rock Jocks, Wall Rats and Hand Dogs.
