Opis:
After spraining my ankle two weeks earlier hiking down the east ledges of El Cap, I convinced two buddies to go up an aid wall, being that I still could not jam my foot in a crack. We decided to climb Mescalito (the aid route that shares the most pitches with the Dawn Wall) and were hoping to do it in 4 days while replacing old hardware along the way as a little community service project. By early afternoon on day 3, we made it to The Bismark which is one of the most epic ledges on El Cap, perched high up the wall with an unreal view of Half Dome. With plenty of daylight to spare, I rapped down to replace a bolt two pitches below, Billy went to take an hour long dump, and Chris went to fix the next pitch. The topo Suggests an optional 10” Piece for the squeeze chimney at the top of the pitch but Chris is a wide climbing aficionado so we didn’t even think of bringing let alone owning such a piece. Plus Alex Honnold had casually mentioned to us that there wasn’t much wide on the climb when we were racking up, so we dropped the topo recommended #5 as well. With Chris 150 feet off the belay and forced to free climb the 5.9 squeeze with a #4 well below him, he suddenly fell out of the off-width and whipped about 30 feet. The three of us had been half jokingly hoping each other would whip the entire climb so Billy and I were overjoyed when we saw such a big fall go down. Chris rested a few minutes, pulled up to his high piece of gear and opted for the layback escape. The layback is only rated 5.10a but it was slick, Chris was exhausted, and Billy and I were almost certain he was going to go for another ride. He barley squeaked it clean, got to the anchors and lowered down for burritos and an epic sunset.