An Intimate Look at the Latest El Cap Speed Record

Yosemite’s El Capitan is a mountain of the extremes. The 3,000-foot tall Mecca of North American rock climbing has drawn climbers’ attentions since it was first climbed in 1958 by Warren Harding, Wayne Merry, and George Whitmore. It took them 47 days to climb the face via the Nose route, using expedition-style tactics. Two years later, Royal Robbins led a team of climbers up the same route in under a week. By 1975, the route had been climbed in a day, albeit not free. It was not until 1993 that Lynn Hill climbed the route completely free.

These days, the new competition is for time. Over the last few years, the speed record on the Nose has been set over and over, each time shaving mere minutes off the previous time. A time set in 2012 by none other than Alex Honnold (who has also free-soloed the face by another route) and his partner Hans Florine stood until a brisk morning last October. Shortly after 9:00 AM, Brad Gobright and Jim Reynolds, crested the top of El Cap and read the time on their watches: 2:19:44, a whole four minutes faster than Alex Honnold’s.

Gobright and Reynolds approached the whole feat with a sense of humor. In an interview with National Geographic, when asked what the last thing they did before starting up was, Gobright answered: “Same as always: we asked some Europeans if we could go first. Usually, 80 percent of the climbers on the Nose are Europeans. No Joke.”

Filmmaker Tristan Grezsko was in the valley and captured the whole climb through a telephoto lens. This might be one of the coolest timelapses we’ve ever seen.