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The Dawn Wall


NotActuallyALonghorn

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 In January 2015 the world watched, spellbound, as Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson spent 19 days clawing their way towards the top of a seemingly impossible climb on the 3,000 foot vertical face of El Capitan, in Yosemite National Park. THE DAWN WALL is a feature documentary about their history-making climb, the years of effort it required, and the inspiring life journeys of the climbers. The movie goes beyond pure climbing action, paints intimate portraits of Caldwell and Jorgeson, and celebrates the universal spirit of dreaming big, and never giving up.

Trailer:

 

 

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To clarify some terms that are often confused:

'Free climbing' means that you are roped in, tied to a belayer and an anchor. But all your vertical ascent is by you climbing yourself. The rope system is insurance, but does nothing to haul yourself up. If you fall, you get caught by your belayer. This is how Tommy and Kevin climbed this route.

'Aid climbing' means that, some of the time, you use the rope/anchor to pull yourself up, i.e. on a super blank part of the wall. So the rope system is essential to the climbing. This is how this route used to be always (and still mostly is) climbed.

'Free solo climbing' means that you have no rope and no anchor. If you fall, you hit the deck, 3000 feet below in this case. The climbing is mechanically the same as 'free climbing', but the stakes are far higher.

 

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16 minutes ago, Native Horn said:

I still haz a confuse.  Why do I care that some guys did it in 19 days?  Don't I want to watch the guys who did it in a few hours?  (Thanks Pantone for the glossary, that is interesting.)

after some very brief research, I think that the dawn wall is considerably more difficult than other ascents on el capitan (that were completed in a few hours time).  honnold said in an interview that a free solo up the dawn wall will never be done because it’s “so fucking hard”.  

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