Shutterstock / haveseen
Six months ago, world-renowned speed climbers Jim Reynolds and Brad Gobright set the speed record by ascending the Nose of El Capitan in Yosemite. They bested the previous record by four minutes and climbed El Capitan’s 2,900-foot, 90-degree rock face in only 2 hours and 19 minutes.
El Capitan is to rock climbing what Augusta National is to golf. It’s the greatest test of a rock climber’s kills. At the time that Reynolds and Gobright set the record, there was a lot going on at El Capitan. Just 10 days earlier a climber had been paralyzed after falling 100 feet off El Capitan’s Boot Flake. There were rock slides.
You can read all about their record-setting climb here, but not before watching this unbelievably dope timelapse of Jim Reynolds and Brad Gobright setting the speed record, a feat that’s actually easier to accomplish when climbing in pairs instead of climbing alone because the climbers can split up the requisite amount of gear amongst two people instead of a lone climber carrying it all by himself:
According to SFGate, more than two dozen people have died while climbing Yosemite’s El Capitan since 1905. When the pair set their speed record on Sunday the air was thick with smoke from fires to the north, and Gobright said the climb was more crowded than he’d ever seen it before. Not exactly the ideal conditions to set the all-time speed record on El Capitan.