While much of the climbing world has been centered around the Himalaya the past few weeks, rock climbers Alex Honnold and Tommy Caldwell have been making history in Yosemite. Last Friday, May 18th, the two men pulled off an impressive feat of endurance, free climbing Mt. Watkins, El Capitan and Half Dome back-to-back-to-back.According to this report at Climbing.com the entire project took 21 hours and 15 minutes to complete. The boys started their day at 4:45 PM on May 18, going up Watkins first in just 2 hours, 40 minutes. Once at the top, they hiked for an hour to catch a ride to the foot of El Cap, which they started at 10:45 PM and climbed throughout the night. Going up the classic route Free Rider, took 6 hours, 15 minutes. From there it was on to Half Dome, which they began at 9 AM on the 19th. Scrambling up the Northwest Face required an additional five hours, and they stood on top at about 2 PM.
All three routes were free climbed in their entirety and Caldwell says that he fell two or three times on El Cap, but that Alex didn't fall once throughout the day. He also told Climbing that when they spoke the next day, Honnold indicated that he was ready to climbing once again.
Pretty amazing piece of work out of these two very talented climbers.
