![]() Merry carried his water in a large paint-thinner can, “and it tasted like hell.” Climbing gear was rudimentary-some pitons were hammered out of stove legs. This was in a time when there were no energy bars, no fleece. ![]() The final bottom-to-top push had taken them 12 days. On November 12, 1958, three climbers, Harding, George Whitmore, and Wayne Merry, scrambled onto the summit. More than a dozen climbers and summit-support people were involved. With astonishing grit, the team spent 47 days over 16 months setting up their route with bolts, ropes, hardware, food, and camping gear. He assembled a team and chose a route called “the Nose,” on the prow of the massive cliff. El Cap was considered unclimbable, but a mountaineer named Warren Harding was determined to do it. In the late 1950s, Yosemite was already renowned for the world’s best rock climbing, with its hard, high, approachable granite. It is probably the largest granite cliff face on Earth, sheared and polished by glaciers, and pretty much straight up-and oh God down-except for assorted cracks and narrow ledges. I had come to celebrate a milestone in climbing history: the 50th anniversary of the first ascent of El Capitan, that 3,000-foot granite cliff that shines like silver near the western end of seven-mile-long Yosemite Valley. Thousands of visitors were there to hike and bike and admire the play of water over granite, or just gaze at the bald pate of Half Dome. Recent rains had turned on the legendary waterfalls the oaks were yellowing. L ast autumn Yosemite National Park, in California’s Sierra Nevada, was at its gorgeous best.
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