No Falls on the Big Stone: The Quest to Flash El Capitan
For climbers, no rock formation is more beloved than El Capitan in Yosemite Valley, California. Its 3,000-foot south face is one of the most iconic pieces of rock anywhere in the world, and The Nose (VI 5.9 C2), the king line running the prow between its southwest and southeast aspects, is likely the world’s most famous rock climb. Most ascents of El Capitan entail roughly 30 pitches of climbing, usually completed over several days, much of it aided. Climbing El Capitan by any of its big-wall routes is considered a lifetime achievement by many.
To free climb El Cap’s big-wall routes is a proud feat, undertaking difficulties of at least 5.12d. Lynn Hill was the first person to free climb the Big Stone in 1993, via The Nose (5.14a), and two years later Alexander Huber free climbed a variation to the Salathé Wall, which he dubbed Free Rider (5.13a).
So when Barbara “Babsi” Zangerl flashed Free Rider from November 19 to 22 this year, free climbing the entire route on her first attempt, without a single fall, the climbing world was shocked. Not only had the 36-year-old Austrian enchained some 3,300 feet of hard climbing in a single no-falls push, she’d also succeeded where no man ever had, despite the world’s best trying for the better part of thirty years. “I didn’t even know it was possible,” she told me when we spoke last week.
***
For nearly as long as climbers have been freeing El Capitan, the upper echelon among them have attempted to onsight or flash it. Japanese climber Yuji Hirayama said that, for a time, it was his “greatest dream” to make the formation’s first onsight. Hirayama established one of the world’s earliest proposed 5.15a climbs, Flat Mountain, in 2003, and was the first climber to onsight 5.14b (White Zombie, 2004), and. He was also the first Asian to win an IFSC World Cup (1998, 2000).
In addition to setting (and breaking) the speed record on El Capitan three times with Hans Florine in the 2000s, Hirayama made an onsight attempt that wasn’t bested for over 20 years. In 1997, he sent Free Rider up to the slippery “Teflon Corner” (5.12d) without falling. He peeled off midway through the glassy crux, lowered to the belay, and then flashed the “Huber Pitch” (5.13a, today called the “Boulder Problem”), which is accessed from the same ledge as the “Teflon Corner.” He fell twice more on the headwall. Hirayama sent Free Rider on his second attempt. “When I was on the Teflon Corner, it was nine years after [Piana and Skinner] climbed in ‘88,” Hirayama said. “There was not much information. It was dirty and overgrown. Not good conditions.” His effort was not topped until 2018, when Adam Ondra, supported by Nico Favresse, attempted to onsight the Salathé (5.13b) in a single day. Beginning shortly after midnight, he blazed through most of the route, including the cruxy “Boulder Problem,” but fell near the top, on the famed headwall. “Some dreams came true yesterday, but the ultimate, the onsight is not fulfilled,” Ondra wrote on Instagram. “And the nature of onsight is that it will never be fulfilled any more. It is only one try.”
Why did Hirayama’s onsight record stand for so long? He seems to chalk it up to careful planning. Before he launched on Free Rider, he spent a month in Yosemite, scanning the route with binoculars in between other climbs and training days. “Maybe you cannot see everything, but you can get a lot of information,” he said. “You can understand, you can imagine. And even imagination is quite important.”
Hirayama, who was also the first person in the world to onsight 5.14b, said that onsight climbing—sending a route on the first try without any prior information, save what you can glean from the ground—will always hold a special place in his heart. “Onsighting brings adventure to a climb,” he said. “You do not know the gear, the holds, the path.”
Flashing, with its allowance of written, photo, or video beta, may be slightly easier than onsighting, but Hirayama said it’s perhaps the purest method available for a modern climber, at least on a highly trafficked route like Free Rider. In 2024, unless you’ve been living under a rock, it’s hard to not have seen some of the moves on this route, or heard some of the beta. (If you watched Free Solo, or even if you read my article about Zangerl’s climb last week, you don’t qualify for an “onsight” of Free Rider anymore. Sorry!)
Huber, Free Rider’s creator, shares Hirayama’s sentiment. “Today, with social media, there is information about everything,” he told me. “How is it possible to have no information about a climb? For me, there is no longer any difference between flashing and onsighting. The important thing is that you do a climb on the first go.”
Even flashing requires serious restraint. A climber must remain virginal, saving themselves for a single attempt. For a route like Free Rider, which shares pitches with some of El Capitan’s most popular routes, in a sense it is Yosemite inexperience, not experience, that is demanded. Hirayama was extremely impressed with Zangerl’s commitment and skill. “It’s 900 meters of climbing without falling. It’s a big thing to do,” he said. “Maybe Free Rider has more traffic today… But it’s not easy, and it’s not just the climbing. Temperature. Wind. Crowds. You need a certain patience, and luck.”
In 2004, Mike Anderson and his twin brother Mark also came close to flashing Free Rider. The duo climbed the route swapping leads, so neither led every pitch, and they also returned to the ground twice, once so that Mike could take an exam for his graduate degree in robotics. The pair had also aided the Salathé previously. Still, Mike led every crux pitch, and did not take any falls. In a blog post from 2018, Mark called their effort, “for all practical purposes, the first flash of El Capitan.” (Which, of course, does not equate to the actual first flash of El Cap.)
When I spoke with his twin brother, Mike, last week, he seconded this. “I put it down in my journal as a flash,” Mike said. “But it was a personal thing. I wasn’t trying to game the system.” For Mike, the style in which he sent the line was meaningful to him, even if it didn’t fit the standard of a publicly accepted flash. “In terms of my impact on the sport of climbing, it’s the most impactful thing I ever did,” he said. “People have so much information available now, that they don’t have the ability to practice the art of the onsight,” he said. “We’re all just overwhelmed with information.”
But like Hirayama, Anderson feels this art is still important to the sport. “Rock climbing’s roots are in mountaineering and alpinism, and onsighting descends from that,” he said. “You’re climbing in the moment, as the route appears to you. You have all these skills within you, and you apply them to the climb, instead of developing skills specifically for the climb. There’s meaning in that.”
British crack climber Pete Whittaker—who was the first person to rope solo El Capitan in under 24 hours—also came close to flashing El Capitan via Free Rider in 2014. Whittaker had to descend from the Heart Ledges after crowding prevented him from reaching his bivy spot before nightfall, so he didn’t complete the climb ground-up, in a single push. He also fell on the “Boulder Problem” (but then, in the inverse of Hirayama’s first attempt, flashed the Teflon Corner).
“There are a lot of people mentioning my ascent in 2014,” Whittaker said, in the wake of Zangerl’s flash, “but I believe there are many other climbers that have done more impressive onsight or flash attempts than me.” In addition to Hirayama, Anderson, and Ondra, in November 2021, Josh Wharton—who trained extensively for a Free Rider flash—also made a stout effort, but fell at the end of the “Boulder Problem.” He stuck the finishing “ninja kick” crux move (V7) but his foot blew as he was reaching over.
To Whittaker’s point, other climbers have come just as close, if not closer, to an El Capitan flash on arguably harder routes. Leo Houlding nearly aced El Niño (5.13c) in 1998, but grabbed a quickdraw on the runout first pitch, 5.13b, “narrowly avoiding a 70-foot fall.” He sent second go and made the route’s second ascent. (In 2012, we reported that Houlding came close to a Free Rider flash as well, but fell on the “Boulder Problem.” Admittedly, a true “flash” here was out of the question, as he’d climbed the initial Free Blast pitches in the past.) In 2009, Ueli Steck slipped on wet rock on a 5.11 pitch of Golden Gate (5.13b), but styled every other pitch, including multiple 5.12 and 5.13 pitches. And in 2022, after sailing across the Atlantic, Sébastien Berthe onsighted every pitch of El Niño, save for a single fall on “Eismeer” (5.13b/c).
As far as Whittaker is concerned, Babsi’s effort is distinctly a notch above the rest. “People have been close, but Babsi is the first one who can say she did it without an asterisk,” he said. “She started at the ground, got to the top, and didn’t fall off anywhere.”
In much of the free climbing world, women have played second fiddle to male first ascents, but El Capitan is a marked exception. The first person to free climb The Nose was also a woman: Lynn Hill. She was also the first person to free El Capitan in a single day, via the same route the following year.
“This is not an easy thing to do,” Hill said of Zangerl’s flash. “Some people project for a whole season and walk away empty-handed. You have to be a very good climber to put that coordination together. You might know what you have to do, but to actually stick it the first time shows a lot of drive [and] passion.” Hill added. “It is toughness, but it’s also creativity, and being able to concentrate, and be [both] focused and relaxed.”
For Hill, Zangerl’s success on Free Rider is a resounding affirmation, some three decades down the line, that climbing is no man’s world. “It’s inspiring for women to know that the benchmark is [so] high,” she said.
Huber found it particularly impressive, and in a sense seemed almost proud, that his route was first flashed by a woman. “Lynn was way ahead of her time with The Nose,” he said, “and now Babsi is more or less ahead in the same way. Yes, men like Yuji and Adam have come close. But it is Babsi, a woman, who is first to flash El Capitan. It goes, boys.”
⸻
Author’s note: Although today almost everyone spells the route Freerider, Huber said his route is actually written in two words, Free Rider, as a nod to the 1969 motorcycle film Easy Rider.
The post No Falls on the Big Stone: The Quest to Flash El Capitan appeared first on Climbing.