An American climber has become the first woman to free-climb El Capitan’s longest route, a journey that took more than three weeks and has been completed by only a handful of climbers.
It took Sasha DiGiulian, 33, a world-renowned climber from Colorado, 23 days to ascend the roughly 3,000-foot wall in California’s Yosemite National Park, some of which were spent suspended against the wall’s ledge waiting out a period of rain, snow and wind.
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DiGiulian is one of just a few climbers to summit El Capitan via the Platinum route, a goal she’d been eyeing for a while, according to an interview with CBS News.
“For the last few years I’ve been so committed to this specific line … This climb kind of consumed me,” she said.
DiGiulian was accompanied by her climbing partner, Elliot Faber, and occasionally a videographer. She described the endeavour as the “most formative and challenging climb” of her career.
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FILE – Kevin Jorgeson, left, and Tommy Caldwell climb El Capitan on Jan. 14, 2015, as seen from the valley floor in Yosemite National Park, Calif. Caldwell and Jorgeson became the first to free-climb the rock formation’s Dawn Wall.
AP Photo / Ben Margot
DiGiulian recalled how strange it felt to stand on two feet after almost a month of climbing.
Story continues below advertisement“When we got to the top, after 23 days of this climb, I took a step and I just started laughing cause I was like, I haven’t walked in so long,” she told CBS News on Monday.
El Capitan has 17 different climbing routes, DiGiulian explained, and free-climbing is when climbers scale using only their hands and feet, supported by ropes to prevent them from falling, which they rig in sections as they go.
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DiGiulian shared snapshots of her climb on social media, including a video from inside her portaledge, a suspended tent system rigged to the wall’s edge, which was visibly disrupted by strong winds and severe weather that temporarily halted her ascent nine days in.
In another post, she said she was perched at 2,600 feet waiting out the storm.
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She and Faber relied on a Jetboil to cook, snacked on protein bars, shared a Kindle to read and preserved phone battery by switching in and out of airplane mode to maintain communication on the ground.
The pair arrived in Yosemite on Oct. 8 to begin preparations for a 14 to 16-day climb of the Platinum route, which has 39 pitches, she told CBS.
They set up rope points and trekked with more than 30 gallons of water to the top of the wall, which they would later access during the climb.
Faber helped create the route years ago by carving tiny divets on the rock face, but had not actually climbed it until he began his ascent with DiGiulian on Nov. 3.
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