The Dawn Wall

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4956]

 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:

 

 

[Biff Tannen 44921]

Rad.  I'm confused though.  Royal Robbins and Warren Harding both did the Dawn Wall in the 70s.  Is this maybe a different form of climbing or something?

[futureman 22324]

didn’t alex honnold free climb el capitan in about 3 hours?

[davidg 4015]

Tommy's  was the first free climb of Dawn Wall.

Alex's free solo climb was about 4 hours.  Alex and Tommy set a speed record on The Nose of just under 2hrs earlier this summer. 

[pantone159 709]

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.

 

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4956]

A good primer on climbing in Yosemite is Valley Uprising. Looks like it is available on Netflix now. Very cool doc and worth the time if you are interested at all in rock climbing.

[Native Horn 3465]

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.)

[AUS-97HORN 11546]

4 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?

because duh:

 

[futureman 22324]

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”.  

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4956]

Yeah, just free climbing the dawn wall was considered impossible until Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson did it, which is what the documentary is about. This was probably one of the biggest things in the sport of climbing to happen in the last decade.

[Biff Tannen 44921]

2 hours ago, NotActuallyALonghorn said:

A good primer on climbing in Yosemite is Valley Uprising. Looks like it is available on Netflix now. Very cool doc and worth the time if you are interested at all in rock climbing.

cosign