Colley, Tippett, and Adams Set 21-Hour Speed Record on One of El Cap’s Hardest Aid Routes

For aid climbers, the Reticent Wall (A4+; 2700 feet) on El Capitan holds a near-mythical status. In 1995, Scott Stowe, Laurie Reddel, and “The Master” Steve Gerberding first cut straight up the Dawn Wall to establish what was then the hardest route on El Capitan. The Reticent’s penultimate pitch, the Natural, is iconic for having no manufactured placements such as bolts, rivets, or bat hooks. It was the only pitch that Gerberding ever rated A5, which means a fall results in certain death.

Hard aid climbing is a niche sport, and for the uninitiated, its joys are difficult to understand. It often takes two to four hours to climb a hard pitch. You need to search for tiny hook placements and hammer beaks into shallow constrictions. If successful, these placements only just hold your body’s weight. Each of these marginal, bodyweight-only placements is followed by another, until you find yourself miles above any gear that is remotely likely to hold a fall. Your body can’t handle an adrenaline rush for such a long period of time, so the only way to succeed is to remain calm in a situation where calmness isn’t natural.

Over the years, the Reticent has seen at least fifty repeats, most of them taking more than a week. Perhaps the only Reticent ascent to have eclipsed its first was Ammon McNeely, Ivo Ninov, and Dean Potter’s shockingly fast lap in 2006. The trio pushed the 21-pitch route in 34 hours and 57 minutes. To climb so quickly on bodyweight-only gear requires accepting huge and potentially dangerous falls. No climber in history has been more comfortable with this than Ammon. Watching videos of his gear-ripping falls were what got me psyched on hard aid climbing back in 2022. It’s one of my greatest sadnesses that I never got to meet him before he died in 2023.

When I started big wall climbing 3 years ago, I sought out information about Ammon, Dean, and Ivo’s Reticent effort like it was gold dust. I was obsessed by stories of their ascent, like how Dean, the free climber of the team, started the Natural, then half way up, decided to back off and let Ammon finish the pitch. Ammon was nervous above gear he hadn’t placed himself, but that didn’t stop him from whipping three times on the supposed “death pitch.” I could hardly imagine the prospect of climbing nonstop for 35 hours on terrain that demanded the highest level of attention. The picture of the team on the summit, all clad in white painter’s overalls, was imprinted in my mind.

Almost a year ago, after making my own solo ascent of the Reticent over 7 days, I saw Lance Colley in El Cap Meadow. I’d met him a few times, and I’d seen his name plastered all over the back of the guidebook in the “Speed Records” section. I said I thought that the Reticent would go in a day for him. He just smiled, paused, and told me that he and Brandon Adams had been thinking about it for years. They just needed someone for the middle block. I made no attempts to be subtle in trying to get on the team.

Later in the year, whilst drinking coffee in the Yosemite Lodge, I got a text saying Brandon was in the Meadow. I’ve never sprinted for the shuttle bus so quickly.

Since I learned of his existence, Brandon had been a hero of mine. I’m not sure such a thing as the ‘best aid climber in the world’ exists, but if it did, my money would be on him. He has more speed records on El Cap than anyone else, and he’s also made the first ascent of two A4 El Cap aid lines. We talked about his route, Neptune, for which I had just logged the second ascent. Then the conversation turned to the Reticent. Once again I hinted that I’d be interested in pushing it.

Six months later, on March 25th, I was starting my shift at a London climbing gym when I got an email from Brandon. I was on the team.

This year, at the start of May, I got to Yosemite and immediately soloed the Nose in a day to get fit for the Reticent. The day before our May 24 attempt, Brandon, Lance, and I got organized behind Brandon’s car, tossing a large rack of beaks, hooks, cams, rivet hangers, and draws into a bag.

We carried the rack and some water up to the base and headed back to the Meadow, abuzz with anticipation. Brandon and Lance kept saying, “It’s finally happening.” My biggest fear wasn’t the potential falls. It was being slow and letting the team down.

We met the next morning at 5:30 a.m. Conversation was brief as we walked up. Everyone was seemingly thinking about their blocks. The plan was to change over at the big ledges on the route. Lance would lead the first seven pitches, which belong to an easier route, New Dawn (A2+), though they’re still awkward and could be potentially slow. Then, I would lead the middle seven pitches to Wino Tower. These pitches are independent to the Reticent, and they took me two full days to climb the year before. Finally, Brandon would lead the last seven pitches, including both A4+ cruxes, to the top.

Lance flew up the first three pitches, taking a little over 30 mins for each. Most teams on New Dawn take a day to climb these. At the fourth pitch, the climbing got thinner, so we slowed down a little. As I started to clean the fourth pitch, I dropped a Micro Traxion—which I felt I needed to make up for.

We made steady progress as Lance worked out the pitches and navigated an awkward flare. Roughly 5 hours after setting off, and 30 minutes later than expected, we arrived at Lay Lady Ledge, our one-third mark up the route. I’d told Brandon I could probably do my block in seven to 10 hours, but none of us really knew how long it would take—including me.

Now was my time to prove myself not to be a punter. Two swings right, a traverse on hooks, and a beaking corner breezed by. Then I got the shout: “Olly, you forgot the haul line!”

Once again, I felt that I was letting the team down. I’d caused a delay on what should have been an unproblematic pitch.

However, each time I neared a belay and gave a five-minute warning, Lance and Brandon sent back shouts of encouragement. This always gave me a massive boost going into the next pitch. I found myself flowing more freely, feeling more comfortable on the marginal gear, and somehow unafraid of falling. After a sketchy move to bypass a blown copperhead whilst passing the Free Dawn Wall (5.14d), I felt nothing could stop me on the long rivet ladders to Wino Tower, my changeover point with Brandon. I made it there in 7 hours, right at the lower end of the time I’d given to the team.

The hardest and the best pitches of the Reticent are all concentrated in its top third. These were Brandon’s. Lance and I had given him 12 hours to get up the 7 long, steep, nailing pitches. This probably wouldn’t be enough time for almost anyone else, but Lance seemed to think that for Brandon, it was assured. I had never seen him climb before, so I was less certain.

His first pitch was what most now call the crux. The Master’s Corner shoots off Wino Tower for over 200 feet. It’s climbed on thin beaks and hooks, passing some seriously suspect sections of rock that require a great deal of thought and care. When Andy Kirkpatrick, author of the aid climbing manual Higher Education, soloed the route in 2001, it took him eight hours to lead the Master’s Corner.

Brandon did it in one.

When he shouted down that he was at the belay, I just looked at Lance, dumbfounded with what I’d just seen. I now realized why Lance was so confident in Brandon. Unless something went drastically wrong, the sub-24-hour ascent was in the bag.

However, not long later, we realized why the Reticent was logistically so hard to complete in a day, even with climbing quickly. By the time Brandon reached the end of his spare rope on the next pitch, Lance still had most of the previous to clean. He had to hammer out the dozens of beaks that Brandon had placed, which took a lot of time and energy. This was a common occurrence for the rest of the route.

Lance and I had planned to swap who had the arduous task of cleaning each pitch, but my pre-wall Curry Village pizza hadn’t gone down well. As Lance cleaned the steepest pitch of the route, he heard some strange noises through the dark. First, he heard Brandon taking a 30 foot fall whilst short fixing, ripping three beaks and ending up just below the belay. Then, he heard me throwing up at the top of the pitch. Lance kindly agreed to clean the rest of the route so that I could take it easy and just jumar to the top. He did this at a breakneck speed to keep us moving.

The next pitch was almost entirely beaks for 200 feet up a steep corner system. Lance said he felt he was in a recurring nightmare, where, like an aid-climbing Sisyphus, he was hammering out a never-ending line of beaks. At the next stance, he told me that he questioned whether he had somehow found himself in hell.

By 2 a.m., we were at New Dawn Ledge, almost 3,000 feet above the Valley floor with only one hard pitch remaining. It was the first time all night that we were able to lie down. We’d planned to finish in the light, but we’d been quicker than expected. Brandon started the Natural in the dark, making short work of it despite the complex routefinding in the top half. At one point, a flake broke off, causing Brandon to fall again. The flake sailed down between myself and Lance on the ledge below. At this stage, we’d been exposed to enough risk that Lance and I looked at each other and laughed. Brandon immediately pulled back up and kept climbing.

We thought the difficulties would be over after that pitch, but after his falls, Brandon started to slow a little. As he began the final pitch, he said he was close to bonking. Soon after, he took another fall on the A1 crack, ripping 2 beaks and breaking the tie off another. This time, he took a bit longer to start climbing again. It was clearly a painful fall, and we realized we could still fail our goal if one of us got injured. Brandon reset, pulled back up, and spent a little extra time nailing the beaks to climb more securely.

Not long later, we reached the top, 21 hours and 57 minutes after starting. We were in disbelief that we had gone 13 hours quicker than the team we had all idolized, though we were too tired to really celebrate. We just offered each other congratulations before we packed up and walked down.

Though I got to climb a classic route with two heroes of mine, the regret that I never got to meet another two was still there. In a way though, whilst moving up such a technical route at speed, ignoring thoughts of the massive fall potential, I found part of Ammon and Dean’s spirits on the wall. I hope they would have been psyched for us.

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