It’s October, and the mountain climbing season is in full swing in Yosemite, with climbers from all over the world crowding the partitions. Notable highlights embrace Tanner Wanish and Michael Vaill setting the document for the Yosemite Triple Crown (El Cap, Half Dome, and Mt. Watkins in 17:55) and Oliver Tippett’s second ascent — and first solo ascent — of Neptune on El Cap.
One other noteworthy ascent is Taylor Martin’s first solo ascent of a brand new route on the Higher Yosemite Falls Wall. Her line, Dust Worm, situated east of Misplaced Arrow Spire, weaves out and in of the Czech Route and the Rainbow Route. Over a number of days and nights, Martin adopted grooves, flares, and micro seams, utilizing each trick within the guide: stacked pins, large cams, rows of copperheads, and even driving beaks instantly into the rotten stone. The rock high quality varies wildly, and though Yosemite’s granite is thought for its top quality, Martin usually in contrast the sections she climbed to the crumbly cutler stone and stucco-like formations present in Utah’s Fisher Towers.
“I like old-school type routes and utilizing angles and stuff like that, like knife blades. They nonetheless have a goal or a spot,” Martin stated.
Having perused Martin’s Instagram web page and her new route, I had many questions, so we dove proper in: “It looks like you’re simply prepared to place your self within the area and go for it. A few of your anchors are only a bunch of beaks,” I advised her.
She described a halfway anchor comprised fully of beaks she used whereas fixing: “It was so gnarly. I bear in mind it once I constructed it, and I used to be so chill. I rapped off of it and went again down. I got here again and jugged up the road, and I used to be like, ‘Man, it’s been chilly, it’s been scorching’ (cracks can increase and contract as temperatures change). I assumed, ‘I hope it’s good,’ you understand? It’s in all probability good, however…”
Earlier than digging into Dust Worm, it’s value noting that Martin, who labored this season on the Curry Village bike stand and climbed on her weekends, had already had a powerful climbing season. Even earlier than establishing her new route on the Falls Wall, Martin (who prefers the pronouns she/they) ticked 5 El Cap routes, together with two solo-in-a-day ascents. Her solo climbs embrace The Nostril in 22:21 and, later, Lurking Concern in 18:46. In late July/early August, she additionally put up a brand new route on the Camp 4 Wall, which I beforehand reported on in “Attacking Bees and a 50-Footer: Taylor Martin’s New Yosemite Route.”
This season Martin was on massive partitions each probability she received — plus free climbing lengthy routes. For instance, she ticked the notoriously thuggy and offwidth-y 5.10 multi-pitch Psychological Block proper earlier than we chatted.
Along with being a big-wall first ascensionist, Martin enjoys long-distance solo bikepacking. As soon as, she rode six thousand miles from Utah to Alaska and again. To make these accomplishments much more spectacular, Martin survived being crushed by a faculty bus whereas on her bike. After years of restoration, the accident didn’t gradual her down one bit.
Although it is likely one of the most considered partitions in Yosemite — Yosemite receives round 4 million guests yearly — ascents on the 1,430-foot Higher Yosemite Falls Wall are much less frequent than on different formations. Yosemite Level Buttress is semi-popular, as is Through Sin Aqua. Freestone will get some visitors, however the 5.11 offwidth and a dicey 5.10 part hold many climbers away. Moreover, Freestone doesn’t attain the highest, and lots of different strains have fallen into obscurity.
Talking of obscurity, a few years in the past, I helped Belgian celebrity climber Nico Favresse put up the 5.13b L’Appat. To my information, it has not seen a second ascent. Likewise, Sasha DiGiulian and Jon Cardwell freed the Misty Wall, which isn’t precisely a commerce route.
First ascents on the Yosemite Falls Wall date again to 1947, with John Salathé and Anton “Axe” Nelson’s ascent of the Misplaced Arrow Chimney, then thought-about “probably the most demanding climb but within the temporary historical past of Yosemite climbing.” The ascent took 5 and a half days, in line with the American Alpine Journal. This climb marked a number of firsts: it was the primary time bolts have been positioned in Yosemite for upward progress, the primary wall performed with a number of bivies, and the primary massive wall performed with metal pitons (solid from the axle of a Ford Mannequin A).
This route established Salathé as the daddy of big-wall climbing and urged Nelson to write down within the Sierra Membership Bulletin: “One can’t climb in any respect until he has adequate urge to take action. Hazard have to be met—certainly it have to be used—to an extent past that incurred in regular life.”
Curiously, very like Martin would do 77 years in a while her first ascent of Dust Worm, “Salathé usually needed to hammer his pitons instantly into rotten granite,” wrote Allen Steck in regards to the Misplaced Arrow Chimney.
Quick ahead to fashionable instances, and Eric Kohl — usually climbing solo — has been extremely energetic on the Higher Yosemite Falls Wall. His first ascents on the wall alone embrace: (PDK stands for Fairly Darn Klaus… principally A5.)
Sprayfest (VI 5.11b, Kohl-Shipley, 1990)
…Injustice for All (VI 5.8 A4, Kohl, 1996)
It’s So Terrible (VI PDK, Kohl, 1998)
Wheel of Torture (VI 5.7 A4, Kohl, 1989)
World of Ache (VI 5.8 A5, Kohl, 1991)
Reign in Blood (VI A4, Kohl, 2002)
Witching Hour (VI 5.7 PDK, Kohl, 2003)
Through sin Liquor (VI 5.9 A4, Kohl-Humphrey, 1988)
Electrical Ocean (VI 5.10 A4, Kohl, 1992)
Escape from Tora Bora (VI 5.9 A2, Kohl, 2002)
Reckless Abandon (VI 5.8 A4+, Kohl, 1991)
Hurricane Jingus Clusterfuck 2000 (VI 5.9 A4-, Kohl-Legislation, 1997)
Route 66 (VI 5.10 A4, Kohl-Middendorf, 1989)
Dante’s Inferno (VI 5.9 A3, Kohl, 1989)
Satanic Ritual Abuse (5.10 A4, Kohl, 2001)
Most Publicity (VI A3?, Kohl-Legislation, 2003)
Opposite to what Salathé and Martin stated in regards to the Higher Falls Wall — The place else are you able to beat a piton instantly into clean stone? — Eric Kohl as soon as advised me, “It’s a number of the greatest rock within the valley.” However he added, referring to his new massive wall routes Valley-wide, all 46 of them, “Greater than half of those routes are falling aside. Entire pitches or elements of pitches. They’re not likely chossy, simply so fractured that complete sections, like faculty buses, are falling off each on occasion.”
Kohl logged 16 first ascents on the Higher Falls Wall, usually taking “5–6 days on a route after fixing” as a result of he favored the solitude. “Folks don’t wish to trouble with the strategy to the [Upper] Falls Wall. It’s been so uncared for. Nobody’s been up there for the reason that ‘70s.”
Since Dust Worm crosses different routes that had fallen into obscurity, like Rainbow and the Czech Route, in some methods, these sections turned out to be probably the most harmful. On Rainbow, for instance, Martin advised me, “There was this increasing flake, and you then climbed out of that, and there was a rivet and a bunch of bat hook holes.” Because the rivets have been smashed in so near the wall, Martin might solely match the smallest rivet hangers.
“You have been strung out on actually tiny rivet hangers and previous, mungy heads. It was terrifying. I used to be like, ‘I’m gonna rip this complete pitch for positive if this doesn’t work.’”
Dust Worm is situated on the far proper facet of the Higher Yosemite Falls Wall. It begins out on the Czech Route, thrashing via Manzanita. To keep away from the thorny bushes, Martin climbed out proper off the crack system onto the slab.
“Then you definately go nearly a full rope size to the place it received steeper. As an alternative of going left up the Czech Route, you head proper into this gully, which saved getting progressively steeper and wider. It will definitely became a collection of chimney methods — brief, about 9 or ten inches vast. You both chimneyed via them or squeezed your method via.”
It continued like this till it met the Czech Route after three impartial pitches. From there, the route minimize diagonally to the left to intersect the Rainbow Route. The place Rainbow veered proper, Martin continued straight up. When the route blanked out, she positioned two rivets. After a lot technical help climbing, Martin ultimately reached Yosemite Level Buttress, which she adopted to the highest of the handrail for the Higher Yosemite Falls Path. In complete, she shared 2.5 pitches with Rainbow and Pitch 1 with the Czech Route to determine her 12-pitch route.
“There have been some kinds on that climb that I’d by no means skilled earlier than,” Martin stated. “As an illustration, coping with the actually porous granite and realizing you might hammer into these slight corners or instantly into the wall. You play with the problem a bit and use the rock in another way than you usually would.”
I requested Martin if it was true she positioned 30 beaks in a single pitch.
“Sure,” she confirmed. “It was actually steep, and I used to be too scared to get excessive on the ladder. So I stayed on the center rung, reached so far as I might, and simply hammered in one other beak near the place the final one was. I used to be strung out on about 15 of them in the course of pitch 11.”
Martin described that at instances, from extraordinarily slender cracks to desperately vast chimneys, she was so deep in flared chimneys that it felt claustrophobic. Different instances, she encountered monumental options that appeared able to topple with a single contact. One flake, by her estimate, was leaning out from the wall by about 9 inches but one way or the other stayed in place.
She found a splitter crack behind it and climbed that as a substitute. “It’s greater than a automotive, fairly big, however it’s going to come back down in some unspecified time in the future.”
I requested Martin, “What’s it about exploration that retains you motivated, even when the situations aren’t supreme?”
“Numerous it’s in regards to the improbability of it. Being in such an uncommon atmosphere forces you to develop, irrespective of how horrible it’s. You’ll study a lot extra from climbing choss in comparison with splitter climbs. But it surely’s sort of a gnarly headspace to be in for an prolonged interval,” Martin stated.
She additionally shared on Instagram: “I gave the route its identify after many pitches of thrutching and arm-barring my method up the soiled, vegetated vertical bathtubs that make up this route. I needed to be like a worm and worm my strategy to the highest. Slowly and… wormly…”
Although Martin knew she authored a brand new route, she was additionally conscious that folks had beforehand explored the realm. “There are a couple of mysteries on this route. There was what seemed like a bail anchor on Pitch 3, and on the prime of the route, there was an odd set of corroded Petzl hangers instantly under Yosemite Level. I’m proposing this as a brand new route, however I’m focused on figuring out if somebody has already climbed a few of these pitches. All I can say is that that is my interpretation of the cliff.”
For my second-to-last query, I requested, “In your social posts, you talked about being deeply impressed by Yosemite Valley and calling it your yard. How has residing and climbing in Yosemite modified your relationship with climbing?”
“I really feel like we now have excessive requirements right here. It’s a spot the place you may actually blossom as a climber. I’m impressed to get excessive off the bottom, and I believe this can be a nice stepping stone to locations like Patagonia or random massive ranges with infinite slabby granite or off-vertical massive partitions. I additionally just like the actually steep stuff,” Martin stated.
She additionally wrote on Instagram: “I’m so impressed by this Valley. I can bike from the place I dwell to a number of the greatest partitions in North America. I’d say I’m lucky to have this as my yard! Generally I don’t care how ‘dangerous’ the climbing is or how soiled the cracks are. I simply wish to be excessive off the bottom exploring this vertical wilderness.”
For my last query, I requested, “What’s subsequent for you? Do you will have every other new routes in thoughts?”
Martin started itemizing off a variety of potentialities, from different routes on the Falls Wall to the Porcelain Wall, the place she described an infinite splitter, after which to Decrease Cathedral, saying, “It’s fairly damaged, bizarre rock. It seems to be like it might be a bizarre type however one thing new.”
She added, “The potential for first ascents right here is infinite.”
Dust Worm 5.9 A3, 9 days — 4 on the wall.
