What make dawn wall so difficult to free climb?
Answers
Answer:
Explanation:
To take climbing to the next level, you have to innovate, which is just what Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson did to complete one of the most significant ascents in climbing history. The achievement represents the realization of Caldwell’s vision to find a way to free climb the Dawn Wall—widely considered too steep and too difficult for free climbing.
Here are five reasons why the Dawn Wall has been cutting-edge from the beginning and has pushed the sport of climbing to the next level.
It’s Not a Crack Climb
Climbers call the vertical cracks in any cliff “lines of weakness” due to the fact that they are relatively easier to climb than a seemingly featureless vertical rock face that appears as smooth as glass to an untrained eye.
The glacier-polished granite of Yosemite is blessed with thousands of vertical cracks on all its major formations, which is how it became the rock climbing crucible that it is today. With good climbing technique, cracks are relatively straightforward to climb. You simply jam your hands and feet into the crack and follow it upward.
Cracks also have the benefit of being visible from the ground. A climber, using a pair of binoculars, can inspect the wall and easily see the route from the ground—just follow that vertical crack line from the bottom to the top.
Until now, all 13 of the free climbs on El Cap have been mostly crack climbs. The southwest face of El Capitan contains the most prominent collection of vertical cracks.
The Dawn Wall is the first El Cap free climb to really depart from this tradition of following the “lines of weakness” to the summit. You might say that the Dawn Wall is a “line of strength.”
It took a lot of vision on Caldwell’s part to find a stretch of free-climbable rock, which isn’t a crack climb, and on this scale. He spent two years drilling dozens of bolts by hand, a process that takes 45 minutes per bolt, in order to add protection points on a rock face devoid of cracks. He had to scrub dirt off the tiny hand- and footholds and remember their sequences perfectly in order to link the moves.
Thanks to Caldwell and Jorgeson, and their vision for what a free climb on El Capitan could look like, future climbers looking for a good challenge will certainly be turning their attention to the seemingly blank faces located between the cracks.
Coldest Winter Nights
Yosemite is America’s most crowded National Park, with a busy tourist season during the summer months. Even climbers tend to flock to Yosemite in greater numbers during the warmest months of the year. Prime climbing months in Yosemite are typically believed to be in May and October.
When Caldwell and Jorgeson first started working on the Dawn Wall together about six years ago, they would typically try to climb in November. Soon they realized that this wall was simply just too hot for the high-end free climbing. Because the route is not a crack climb, the style of climbing involved grabbing some of the tiniest, most frictionless holds imaginable.
Climbers prefer cold conditions because they believe friction is better between their skin and the rock. Hands sweat less and the rock feels “stickier.” On the southeast-facing Dawn Wall, which collects sunlight for most of the day, Caldwell and Jorgeson discovered that in order to use these holds they needed to climb in January at night.