Climbers Mayan Smith-Gobat and Chantel Astorga have set a new speed record by female climbers on the El Capitan's the Nose in Yosemite National Park. The two women made their climb a few days ago and managed to chop a whopping three hours off the previous record, which was set just this past June.Mayan and Chantel made a scouting run up the route last week and even though they felt they were going slow, they still managed to shave nine minutes off the old record, finishing in 10 hours, 10 minutes. But the ladies knew they could go faster and on Monday they took all of the knowledge they gained during the practice run and put it to good use. When they finished, they turned in a time of 7 hours, 26 minutes, completely obliterating the original time.
Not content with simply climbing one of the hardest routes in the world in record time, Mayan and Chantel moved on to also scale Half Dome. The completed the entire link-up in a time of 23 hours, 35 minutes and by doing so became the first all-female team to do both routes back-to-back. You can read Mayan's account of the climb on her blog, which has an excellent account of the day.
Congratulations to Mayan and Chantel on a job well done. Amazing climbing!
