I shot backwards, tumbled down the wall like a pinball, and came to a stop twenty-five feet below. My last bit of energy was gone. I pulled on gear through the crux and climbed to the ledge sixty feet above. Beth and Adam soon followed.
As I sat on the ledge I could feel my pulse in my fingertips and toes. I had just done more difficult rock climbing in a single day than I ever had before, but it came at a price. I was trembling from the pain, and had serious doubts about tomorrow. Beth and Adam noticed my distress and did everything they could to help. Beth gave me a massage and Adam talked about riding grizzly bears into basecamp. By the time the sun went down I was feeling rejuvenated, and decided to give the pitch another try. The outcome was almost identical to my first try. I gave it one last try before dark, and fell lower.
As I got back to the bivy, we settled in for the night by headlamp. We had been up at three in the morning and gone until nine at night, but still I wanted more daylight. That is one of the many things I love about El Cap — when you are up there, you get to climb as much as you want, from sunup to sundown if you like, or sometimes longer. Beth was particularly drained — eight months off, then straight to El Cap — but she still managed to give me a massage to help me sleep. “Where’s mine?” Adam asked. “I see how it is, I can’t climb 5.14 up here, so I get the raw end of the deal.”
I woke up the next morning feeling pretty sore but confident. I wolfed down some canned peaches and beef jerky and lowered down 100 feet to warm up. The first few moves felt horrible, but after about ten minutes my fingers and toes numbed a bit.
Adam and I rappelled down to try pitch nine again. I powered quickly through the bottom, determined not to let anything stop me this time. I quickly ran through the moves again in my head. I gritted my teeth as I climbed and made it past the divot without error. I matched on the sloper, got my feet up — and then did something that goes against everything I know about climbing hard: I hesitated. Beth and Adam simultaneously started yelling, “Come on Tommy!” I sagged back and dynoed. This time my fingertips caught the hold. I let out a whoop of excitement and scrambled onto the bivy ledge.
The rest of the day was spent climbing the next three pitches: a 5.13c flaring hand and fist crack in a corner, a 5.13b rounded layback, and a wet 5.12d offwidth. If any one of these pitches were on any other free climb on El Cap they would have individually constituted the cruxes, but on this route, they seemed to fall by the wayside. I fell once on each pitch and managed to summon enough energy to do each on my second try. By the end of the day my toes felt like they might pop right through my climbing shoes. All I could feel was pain, but I was finished with a lot of the hard climbing. Things were going well. I was starting to believe I actually might have a chance to send this monster.