28-year-old smashes El Capitan speed record
Yosemite Valley was warm and clear on the morning of Oct. 10 when Nick Ehman hiked to the foot of El Capitan with a belly full of coffee, shouldering a short rope, a helmet and sling of clinking aluminum gear he’d need to ascend the 3,000-foot cliff by himself.
At 8:02 a.m., he put his hand to stone and started up a long vertical crack in the granite, the first feature of the Nose, El Cap’s most popular route, which takes climbers up 28 pitches tracing the cliff ’s central prow as it rises straight up from the valley floor. Ehman, a 28-year-old member of Yosemite National Park’s lauded search-andrescue team, is a lifestyle climber: He’s on Yosemite granite about 200 days a year and has climbed the Nose dozens of times — including 16 times this year.
For its first 300 feet off the ground, the Nose is an intimidating mix of slick slab and incipient crack climbing, Ehman said. After cruising the first pitch in minutes that morning, Ehman knew he’d have a shot at claiming the title of fastest person to solo aid climb the route.
“I didn’t know when I set up that morning how comfortable I’d be going fast,” he said. But after getting going, “I felt very comfortable in that no-fall headspace, and felt like I had to go for it.”
Fall is Yosemite’s prime climbing season, and “Rocktober,” as it’s known, generally sees the highest number of climbing parties on El Cap. The Nose in particular attracts scores of climbers from around the world — at least 599 between May 2021 and June this year, according to park service statistics. It’s a pinnacle objective, and many climbers arrive with plans to spend several days, if not multiple weeks, working the sheer pitches and sleeping in hanging tents anchored into the rock face.
It’s those kinds of endurance climbs that appeal most to Ehman.
“My favorite type of day is a long day when I’m moving through the landscape and covering a lot of terrain,” he said. “You stare up at those crazy rock formations in the valley, and it’s amazing to interact with that environment in such a playful and pure-fun sort of way.”
Climbing the Nose in less than 24 hours is an illustrious feat. It’s most commonly attempted by two-person teams, and the duos who have held the speed-climbing record over the years include some of the greatest modern climbers in Yosemite’s storied history.
Fast rope solos on the Nose are even more prestigious, and that record has been held by only a handful of valley legends — including Dean Potter and Hans Florine — since it was established in 1989 by Steve Schneider, according to Hard Climbs. Then in 2010, renowned soloist Alex Honnold ascended the route in 5 hours, 50 minutes, slicing the previous best time nearly in half.
Ehman knew Honnold’s was the time to beat, and he made sure to snap photos along his climb that would serve as time stamp evidence for the sport’s unofficial record keepers. To claim the record, he’d have to cover about 81⁄2 vertical feet per minute.
Though Ehman and the others who have broken the Nose speed record went alone, they didn’t free solo, which occurs when a climber goes up without a rope, harness, cams or other protection to connect them to the rock face during their climb. (The only person known to have free soloed an entire route on El Capitan is Honnold, who completed a miraculous ropeless ascent of the Freerider route in 2017.)
Ehman used various techniques but his was essentially an aid climb, which means that he brought the necessary equipment — cams, carabiners, a harness, webbing and a rope — to plug into the wall for assistance and prevent a potentially fatal fall. In total, he estimates he carried about 10 pounds of gear. He brought no food or water with him.
The Nose hews mainly to El Cap’s extensive cracks but also involves some tough face climbing and all manner of technical maneuvers, including several “pendulums” that require climbers to anchor their ropes and swing from one vertical crack to another.
A famous pendulum on the Nose is the King Swing, so named for the huge horizontal distance climbers must cover while swinging from one pitch to another while dangling from a long line about 1,000 feet off the ground. Ehman didn’t bring a long enough rope for that, so he audibled to the Jardine Traverse, which he described as “more direct but more technical, harder terrain.”
“One of my favorite moments of the route was free climbing that for the first time,” he said. “That felt kind of special.”
Ehman said he “felt better and better and got more and more excited the higher I went” and made sure to keep an eye on his phone to stay ahead of the record pace. He passed four climbing parties on the way up.
He hauled himself over the lip of El Cap at 12:41 p.m., 4 hours and 39 minutes after starting. A crowd of friends and spectators had gathered in the meadow thousands of feet below, and Ehman could hear their cheers emanating from the valley floor when he topped out.
“I was pretty emotional at the top. I’d been dreaming about that experience for a really long time — being light and unencumbered up there by myself,” Ehman said.
Later that day, his friends and girlfriend threw him a small party at Camp 4, the valley’s climbing epicenter.
The feat was quickly broadcast via ElCap Reports, a one-man blogging operation, and amplified by climbing magazines and social media. In the past week, Ehman has been hailed in certain corners of the online climbing community as the unknown climber who took down a monumental record from one of the sport’s best in Honnold. However, Ehman’s slight alteration to avoid the King Swing distinguishes his ascent from the other Nose speed record climbs.
When asked if he considers the Nose climb to be his pinnacle achievement, Ehman said he “can imagine wanting to pursue that feeling on different routes” in Yosemite.
“There are endless opportunities in Yosemite,” he said. “You’re just limited by your imagination.”