I climbed The Nose Route of El Capitan for my 100th
time September 12, 2015! I am not
hesitating to put an exclamation mark after that sentence. I've never climbed a one pitch route anywhere 50 times. 100 is
a staggering number for a route that is a once-in-a-lifetime-goal for many
climbers. I distinctly remember topping out in the July heat of 1989 with Mike
Lopez and thinking: “Glad I knocked that out, no more big wall camping for me.
Give me sport climbing!” Goes to show that people do change.
Leading up to….
When I hit 50 ascents of The Nose I thought it was odd to
have 90 ascents of El Cap and more ascents of The Nose route then all my
“others route ascents” combined. I called Warren Harding and knew he’d get a
laugh out of me having climbed “his route” 50 times—he did. ( I also told Warren I climbed it with a blind guy, a mother/daughter team and two kids. He thought that was hilarious.) Part of me thought that I should branch out
and do some other routes. This meant that I had to do obscure or at least HARD
aid routes, since I had done all the trade routes. (Salathe, Zodiac, Lurking
Fear, North America Wall, West Face, and another 20 easier aid routes. Etc.) (At
the writing of this post I’ve climbed El Cap 173 times, alas the climbing
community does not “count” The East Buttress of El Cap as “climbing El Cap.”
If you state you climbed El Cap and fail to leave off The East Butress as the route you took, then a climber would call you a liar, or a cheat. Even if this makes me an outcast in the climbing community, I am going to say
it anyway: That’s confusing to non-climbers and it’s elitist. There are easier
routes on El Cap and harder ones. People state they’ve climbed Half Dome, via
the Cable’s Route, or Snake Dike. Note: I have climbed the East Buttress of El Cap
13 times)
My 90th climb of The Nose was with Alex Honnold
for the current record of 2:23:46. I realized
around the 80th that 100 ascents of The Nose was going to happen for me. Of
course that led to the question, who and how would I do the 100th?
My first thoughts were with my wife, Jacki, maybe some of the first people I had
done the route with; ya know, “known entities,” after all I’d want my 100th
to be fun.
Along came Fiona Thornewell whom I met 7 years ago at
a Polish film festival. She is an adventurer, which
includes being a climber—polar exploration being her forte. Fiona was turning
50 and contacted me about doing something challenging for her 50th birthday...
and she had an idea. She asked if I thought she could climb The Nose of El Cap.
I probably quipped back: “It depends who your partner is…” Fiona came out to
Yosemite in the spring this year, 2015, and spent time with the YMS guides and a
brief few hours with me in the climbing gym. While she was here I could see she
was a great character and someone I would love to go on an adventure with. I
made her the offer to go up with me and my wife in September for my 100th.  |
| El Capitini |
Yes, this was a team with two novice big wall climbers. Yes,
neither Fiona nor Jayme had much experience on multi-pitch climbing, let alone
ever being more than 200 ft off the ground. Why did I choose to do my 100th
with beginners? They both had shown past experience of going on adventures and
being out of their comfort zone. Not only surviving those experiences, but also
doing them gracefully or sometimes exceptionally. Experiencing those sorts of
uncomfortable situations in an adventure AND being game for doing it again with
me on El Capitan—that made me have faith that they were not going to be
whiners, that they were going to pull their own weight with the skills and
fitness they came with. That they were going to laugh when it got really hard,
desperate, scary, or miserable. There was a small chance those four things
wouldn’t happen at all on The Nose, but only a small chance.
The climbing
I am a big proponent of alpine style climbing when doing big
walls. Basically that means not sieging the project. Alas, I needed to get in
some practice bigwall technique pitches with Jayme and Fiona, so it only made
sense to me to get some of our gear up to Sickle ledge on The Nose route while doing the practice. At
the base of the first pitch to The Nose we ran into locals Alexa and Jane.
We stashed a good portion of our water for the trip at
Sickle Ledge 4 pitches up the route. We rappelled to the ground with the ropes
left fixed for us to jug up to the high point on our launch day, the for following day, Thursday
September 10th.
We woke up on Thursday, 4:30am and had a civilized breakfast
of eggs, hash browns, strawberries, and coffee. We walked to the base in dawn
light. It was an odd light because the
smoke from the fires was floating in the air. Not thick enough to make you
cough, but dense enough to ruin the view of a crisp blue sky. It also hampered
our views of the surrounding valley for the whole climb. Nothing was ever quite
in focus. Because our gear and large portion of our water was on Sickle we did
not have to haul the first fixed lines. We just carried heavy small packs and
dragged behind a moderate haul bag.
The day started with the trickiest logistical pitches. That
is, the pendulum swings into the Stove Legs from Sickle. These are problematic
due to the lower out of the haul bag and following the traverse for the second
on jugs. Fiona and Jayme, having learned a little bit about this on the practice
day to Sickle, handled this with some experience in hand and some effort. While
we started jugging that day an alpine style team, Linda and Tesia, had started
on pitch one. They caught us at the very top of Sickle. They were “pushing” us
from behind so it was a bit stressful making sure we didn’t slow them down.
Stressful for me, at least. I’m sure Fiona and Jayme had stress from their own
safety and general scares from being up hundreds of feet higher then they’d
ever been before.
 |
| Linda at anchor exiting Sickle. |
Without too much fanfare we survived these tricky pitches
and continued straight up the Stove Leg Cracks for two pitches to arrive at
Dolt Tower just after 3 p.m.
We had found out the day before that John and Andrew left 10 liters of water on Dolt so we skimped a little on what we brought, hoping there would be 3 to 6 liters left by the time the other parties ahead of us going by the ledge took their share. When I arrived at the ledge I saw NO WATER at all. This was not good—the temperatures were in the mid 80s.
We had found out the day before that John and Andrew left 10 liters of water on Dolt so we skimped a little on what we brought, hoping there would be 3 to 6 liters left by the time the other parties ahead of us going by the ledge took their share. When I arrived at the ledge I saw NO WATER at all. This was not good—the temperatures were in the mid 80s.
 | |
| Dolt Tower, Nikei in green shirt. |
By 7:30 p.m. that first evening we had climbed another two
pitches above Dolt Tower to El Cap Tower. This would be our bivy spot
for the night. Around 6:30 p.m. we saw Linda and Tesia arrive at Dolt Tower.
They opted to share the Tower with the Austrians, who were having one more
night’s stay on the wall before their return to the ground.
 |
| Fiona and Jayme on top of Texas Flake. |
Morning came with a Black Medicine Coffee and another bagel.
The fabulous Texas Flake Chimney pitch was the morning warm up, followed by the bolt ladder to Boot Flake, then the incredible King Swing. The King Swing although famously visual to watch and horrifying to lead your first time, also leads into some hard logistical issues for the followers and the hauling of the bag.
 |
| Credit Steve Rokks! |
Following this lead is the messy traverse through the Gray
Bands. I opted here for building a Via Ferrata and ferrying the haul bags along
the line. We took a good long lunch break here and then started up toward The
Great Roof. As is common The Roof was
fixed with many nuts, pins, and fixed cams from previous parties. I even pulled
out a green Camalot and carabiner that someone had left in the end of the roof.
I backed cleaned the roof to make for one long lower out when Fiona cleaned it.
This put us at one of the most exposed anchors on the route.
It gives you a great view down the route. We could see Tesia and Linda toiling
away in the Gray Bands below,
and figured they would be stopping at Camp
4 for the night while we would fairly easily would get to Camp 5. 7:30 pm seemed
to be our appointed hour for arriving to our bivy ledge each night, as that is
when we arrived a Camp 5, two pitches above The Great Roof.
 |
| Looking down from the end of the Great Roof. Tesia and Linda down below in the Gray Bands. |
Camp 5 is a series of ledges rather then one big one. Again
Jayme opted for a small rock ledge to sleep on while Fiona and I shared the luxury
of a doublewide portaledge. I really felt we needed to fix two pitches in the
dark this night so we could insure our mid day predicted top out time for the
photographers and friends we hoped would meet us on top. After a hearty dinner
and some pre sleep conversation I did not have it in me to lead anything. It
would have to wait for morning.
Since it was an early to sleep night, it was not too
difficult to get rolling before 8 a.m., which we just managed. After two leads
we were on Camp 6, where we ran into Hannah and Jake who had bivied there while
we were on Camp 5. I had passed Jake the previous year and he was going at a
pretty good pace. We joked that he was not going to let me pass this year. As
it turns out Hannah and him kept a great pace and we never got close enough or
in a place where we were strong enough or fast enough to pass them. We were
just close enough that we could chat which made for a fun ascent of the top few
pitches.
An hour before we were going to top out we saw and heard
Will Masterman rappelling down from the top. We were delighted to see him. He
along with Steve Rokks, Trev Lee, and Wes Lee had hiked to the top to help us
with gear and take some summit and top out shots.
The final pitch is the famous overhanging bolt ladder. Of
all places on the route to be dangling out in
space away from the rock this is
the most spectacular. You are 2,900 ft above the valley floor and you can view
the whole sweeping line that The Nose route follows. Fiona cleaned on this
pitch and Jayme went for the full air jug ascent on the free line. Neither
option is more or less terrifying.
 |
| Photo by Will Masterman. Hans on the final 5.10 crack before the final roof. Jayme and Fiona at The Wild Stance. |
When you crest the granite and can see the manzanita bushes
and top out pine tree there is a place you can still lean out and see down the
route. If you are not aware of it you could have your head down and be busy
with the task of getting yourself off the route. That’s OK, but it’s a perfect
time to pause, reflect on what you’ve just done and the easy ground ahead that
you have “earned,” by climbing the past three days. I am wanting to substitute
“climbing,” with “laboring,” “fighting,” “struggling,” “investing.” Etc. It is
a huge effort and the sense of accomplishment is such that I have no hesitation
doing it another time. I am looking forward to the 101st.
 |
| The top out tree! Stop the time! 4 days, 5 hours, 21 mintues, 26 seconds. |
Post Climb.
We descended the East Ledges and were down in time for a run
by The Village Store for a food run. Serendipity! We ran into Peter Croft! Peter and I climbed The Nose in 1992 for my 7th ascent and the
record at the time, 4 hours and 22 minutes. That record lasted for 9 years. A
mark that is unbeaten, so far. Peter joined us at my home in Yosemite West and
told stories most of the evening.
It was in the plan to post our climb on social media. We had
hopes that we would get traction and have some followers. We were blown away
with far more attention than we could have predicted. The Park Service was
following us and invited us in to craft a press release the following Monday.
We didn’t get a thumbs up from Obama, but short of that, we were in USA Today, a good collection of other papers and online journals. Some of these are in the links below.
 |
| Mike, Chief of Staff Yosemite NPS and Scott Superintendent NPS Yosemite. |
We didn’t get a thumbs up from Obama, but short of that, we were in USA Today, a good collection of other papers and online journals. Some of these are in the links below.
media -
http://adventureblog.nationalgeographic.com/2015/09/15/yosemite-climber-hans-florine-makes-his-100th-ascent-of-the-nose/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ng%2FAdventureBlogs%2FAdventure_Blog+%28Adventure+Blog%29
http://blog.sfgate.com/stienstra/2015/09/14/bay-areas-hans-florine-makes-100th-ascent-of-el-capitans-nose-route/
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-34238209
http://www.climbing.com/news/hans-florine-100-ascents-of-the-nose/
http://www.outsideonline.com/2015881/florine-climbs-nose-100th-time
http://gearjunkie.com/hans-florine-making-100th-ascent-of-the-nose
http://theadventureblog.blogspot.com/2015/09/hans-florine-completes-100-climb-of.html
http://www.mensjournal.com/adventure/outdoor/climbing-yosemites-el-cap-for-the-100th-times-20150902
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Big Thank you to the people and companies that support me. Jacki Adams Florine, My kids, Touchstone Climbing, Outdoor Research, CRKT, NUUN, Honey Stinger, Field Trip Jerky, Petzl, BD, KINeSYS, Bluewater Ropes, Smith, Extreme Pizza, DFX Sports,& Fitness, Black Medicine, ACE,(yes, we took a porta-ledge), Bandaloop, (yes, their rigging skills help me). Steve Schneider for getting me up The Nose my second time and cutting 40 hours off my PR.
1 comment:
Great write-up Hans - thanks for sharing it
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