El Capitan » El Capitan Southwest Face » The Shield
 

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Speed Record

10h:58mins
Chris McNamara, Cedar Wright
Aug 1999

2013 Ascents

0

Total Ascents Logged

7
  • Jun 15, 2011 2.5 days -- Roger Putnam, Ned Leblond
  • May 2010 2.5 days -- David Allfrey, Scott Lappin
  • Jul 2004 4 days -- Jacques Lepesant, Alik Berg
  • Oct 2003 6 days -- Paul Gagner, Lee Lambert
  • Jun 2002 5 days -- Erik Sloan, Josh Thompson
    Summer climb with perfect, breezy 70 degree weather on the Shield headwall. We replaced most of the lead and anchor bolts. Weird vibe when we blasted as there was a fatality in the Valley the day before when a rope-soloist fell on Braille Book and was killed when the rescue helicopter had trouble getting out of the Spire Gully and ended up ramming the litter through some trees. The empty helicopter was sitting in the meadow of the El Cap meadow and the place was crawling with burly men asking, 'did you see anything yesterday' as they were investigating the helicopter pilot. Good times for us though, mellow cruising up golden bliss.
  • Jun 2000 15h:30mins -- Erik Sloan, Tommy Caldwell
    onsight ascent for both us! Amazing Route! We cheated a little by pre-stashing a couple gallons on Mammoth Terraces before our climb.
  • May 15, 1986 10 days -- Dean Miller, Marcos Couch
    My first Wall. First climb longer than a grade IV for my partner. Triple cracks was 5th aid pitch I'd ever led. Dropped 2nd rope from beneath shield roof. Tied lead and 9mm static togeather and rapped down to grey. Couldn't quite reach grey. swung to within 6 inches or so from the wall and let go with my brake hand. dropped about a foot or so. Feet on a good shelf hands on a sloper. freaking scary, but got the extra lead line. Good thing. Main one got caught on a flake. Had to cut it to salvage what we could. Windy as hell a couple of days on the headwall. No rope bags and too dumb to stack the ropes at the anchors. Ran out of everything at the end. But had a Killer time

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Speed

Log your ascent.
1. Partner
10h:58mins
Chris McNamara, Cedar Wright
Aug 1999
23h:09mins
Rick Lovelace, Kevin Fosburg
Jun 1991 (first one day ascent)
15h:30mins
Tommy Caldwell, Erik Sloan
Jun 2000 (onsight ascent)

Partner

2. 15h:30mins Tommy Caldwell, Erik Sloan Jun 2000 (onsight ascent)
3. 18h:05mins Hans Florine, Greg Murphy Jul 1996
4. 18h:15mins Rolando Garibotti, Adam Wainwright Sep 1994
5. 18h:25mins Hans Florine, Mike Carvile Jun 1995
6. 23h:09mins Rick Lovelace, Kevin Fosburg Jun 1991 (first one day ascent)
7. 32h:40mins Wally Barker, Renan Ozturk, Nick Martino May 2003

Welcome to YosemiteBigwall.com!

YosemiteBigwall.com is a community space for collecting and sharing Yosemite Bigwall climbing information. This new website contains basic information about Yosemite Bigwall climbing routes(Washington Column, the Leaning Tower, and some El Cap routes at least ☺)—detailed topos, trip reports, photos, and route history—all available publicly, free-of-charge.

Till now, information about Yosemite bigwalls has been scattered across many websites, making it is difficult to find information about many(or most!) of the routes. A commercial interest or mentality has prevailed—routes that are popular and get climbed often are easy to find basic information for while routes that are seldom climbed languish in out-of-print guidebooks, in the notebooks of the first ascentionists, or are buried in ‘obscure’ sections of websites.

This is a community work in progress, and as they say, “it takes a village to raise a website” (or is that “a child?”), so please, jump on in and join the fun. If you pioneered one or more bigwall routes in Yosemite, please share information about your climb. If you climbed a bigwall route and found the topo to be inaccurate, or have photos, beta or stories you’d like to share, please do so. With your help, YosemiteBigwall.com will continue to develop into a community supported and run website for all Yosemite Bigwall beta—a true online Yosemite Bigwall library.


Contact Erik with any info/suggestions/updates: erik@yosemitebigwall.com

 

Book/website updates available at www.facebook.com/Yosemitebigwall

 

Special thanks to Tom Lambert(ultriaskier.com) for his sage advice/expertise, and to James McBryan(thetechscouts.com) for developing the site.

Thanks and enjoy the site,

Erik Sloan

 

[[wysiwyg_imageupload:136:]]
Erik Sloan is an Alaskan native, who lived and worked in Yosemite from 2002-2012, and has been bigwall climbing there since 1994. Erik has climbed El Cap over 80 times. He is the co-author of Supertopo’s Yosemite BigWalls 2nd edition, and the author of a community website for Wawona climbing: wawona.yosemitebigwall.com. Erik is currently working on a new, more comprehensive book project that will replace the now out-of-print Yosemite Climbs: BigWalls by George Meyers and Don Reid.