The imminent publication of Alexander Huber’s and Heinz Zak’s new book Yosemite: Half a Century of Dynamic Rock Climbing prompts a fresh look at goings on stateside. And the history of the Salathé Wall provides an ideal mirror of progress in the Valley. Ken Wilson takes a look.

The history of the Salathé Wall is one of the great rock climbing sagas of our time. The huge South-West Face of El Capitan was an obvious target after The Nose had been climbed in 1958. Royal Robbins, Chuck Pratt and Tom Frost were determined to do it in the best style possible in contrast to the weeks of sieging that Warren Harding and his various companions had employed on The Nose. The success of Robbins, Pratt and Frost in 1961 when they climbed the route frugally with just two short bolt ladders and many sections of free climbing of up to 5.9 set up Salathé Wall as a target for ambitious climbers everywhere. Tom Frost’s pictures of the impending headwall reinforced the climb’s image of impressive quality that repeat ascents were soon to endorse. In the early days the climb involved free and aid climbing in roughly equal measures and these days most parties climbing it conventionally as a multi-day big wall route do it with 40% aid and 60% free.

The route was first done British climbers in 1970. Chris Jones partnered by the American Gary Colliver did it first and soon afterwards Doug Scott did it with the Austrian mountaineer Peter Habeler. A year later the climb was rope-soloed by Peter Haan in six days.

Attempts to free climb the route began in earnest in 1981 when Mark Hudon and Max Jones mounted their “as free as can be” campaign in Yosemite. This meant they tackled routes without pre-practice (though they had done some of them in conventional manner first) and tried to free climb as much as possible. By these means, with both climbers attempting to free climb, they got up the Salathé leaving just 300ft of aided climbing (a third of which they had been unable to tackle as it was wet). Many climbers were inspired by the efforts of Hudon and Jones and there were further attempts on the Salathé in the following years. Climbing shoes had improved and so had equipment, with the appearance of Friends and other camming devices making it far easier to place protection in El Capitan’s smooth parallel cracks and old pin scars. Despite these advantages it was not until 1988 that the first free ascent was made by Todd Skinner and Paul Piana. Unfortunately this did not receive the plaudits it ostensibly deserved because of doubts about their claims. These proliferated when a number of talented climbers failed to repeat their line. Whether these doubts have a credible foundation has been the subject of debate ever since.*

Skinner and Piana had swung leads, the second man invariably following by jumaring. Seven years later, a period in which sport climbing exactitude in describing free ascents had become far more important, the German rock climber Alexander Huber made the first free repeat of the Salathé taking care to redpoint every pitch.

On his first ascent of the Salathé by conventional free/aid methods he got his first look at the problem. ‘I had a dream.’ he later wrote, ‘It was the redpoint ascent of the Salathé.’ During the conventional ascent ‘…I had not been able to free climb all the pitches… but I what I had learnt was that every move on the Salathé was possible to free climb. My dream was actually feasible. I had found new variations to those parts of the 1988 route which had presented insurmountable barriers.’
One of the sections he was referring to was the long narrow crack above the Ear that had forced every subsequent attempt into failure.

‘Studying the face in advance from the Meadows, I had noticed a wide crack about six metres to the left. A thin undercling flake makes possible the exposed traverse to gain the terrible 50m offwidth. The ‘Offwidth Monster’ is one of the worst of its sort. It is too narrow to disappear into and too wide to jam with arms or legs, only fierce off-width technique works. The moves are abnormally strenuous, irritating and time-consuming. It’s a horror show: centimetre by centimetre you battle your way upwards, heading for release and redemption. But with this fiendish Offwidth Monster I bypassed the first crux point.’

Huber also found a way round the Teflon Corner. These two variations brought him to the Headwall. He led the main part of this as one 50m pitch linking two “no holds” stances (whereas Skinner and Piana had split the pitch at the traditional hanging stance). The resulting long crack pitch provide a 5.13b lead in a highly dramatic position, followed by another short 5.13b pitch to complete the Headwall. After working out all these problems Huber made a continuous redpoint ascent of the climb in two days, belayed throughout by Heinz Zak.

Huber was not content with his Salathé redpoint. By the late 1990s climbers were routinely ticking the big walls in one-day free or semi-free ascents. The Salathé Wall was an obvious target for such a speed ascent. The problem was the two hard headwall pitches.

These were of such sustained difficulty that they would present a major obstacle for fast repeats. But Huber was convinced that the Salathé could be climbed at an easier standard by using a variation line to the left of the headwall. Accordingly, he worked out a four-pitch variation. This began with a 5.12a traverse immediately below the roof which give access to a line of cracks (pitches of 5.11d and 5.10d) and then a 5.10d offwidth that led up to rejoin the Salathé just two hard pitches below the top.
The story of how he explored all the problems and variations of the Salathé is told in the book Yosemite. In this Huber has produce a pulsating commentary on today’s dynamic Yosemite scene, majestically illustrated by Heinz Zak and impeccably designed by Zak’s wife Angelica. In the following short chapter from the book Alex Huber relates how he and his brother Thomas made the first one day free ascent of 2900ft South-West Face of El Capitan by the Salathé variation … a climb they called Free Rider.

AN EASIER SALATHÉ VARIATION:
FREE RIDER by Alexander Huber

By 1995, I too was itching to do El Capitan in one day. I had found an alternative to the Salathé’s difficult Headwall and had already soloed it. With that in place, I now knew that all the toughest parts of the Salathé were simple to bypass. This new alternative, Free Rider (5.12d), was therefore my best option for a one-day free ascent.

On my next trip to Yosemite in 1998, my brother and I were now fully prepared. Gear was pared down to an absolute minimum with one litre of water each, two energy bars and a bag bursting with chalk. It was mid October and the daylight hours would not be enough, so we set off in the middle of the night. At 3 a.m. we stood at the base of the wall, hyped up and ready for Free Speed.
For the last time that day we fill up our bodies with water. We both stand roped up with our climbing shoes on, facing the black mass of granite. My hands sink into the chalk and using my head torch I lift off the ground at 3:31a.m. We both know the Salathé very well. In the dark, we know where the holds are and we know which direction we are heading in. By sunrise, we already have the first eleven pitches, the Free Blast, behind us. The next determining obstacle will be the Monster Offwidth. It takes us one hour for that one pitch. After such physical torture, we stand astride the El Cap Spire and feel in need of a breather. It is eleven o’clock. We have eight hours of daylight left and fourteen pitches to go. Not long for such difficult climbing and we will be pushed but we still need a twenty-minute break right now.

It is just before four o’clock when we move away from the Salathé. Thomas starts traversing to the left below the headwall roof. After five metres, just before the arête the horizontal seam seems to vanish. But just around the arête there are the necessary holds to continue. Thomas gropes for the invisible holds, and soon disappears out of my sight. When I rejoin him we both feel pretty spent and have long since eaten our second energy bar. But now we follow perfect cracks, which split the otherwise featureless golden granite. These are just as exposed and beautiful as the ones just around the corner on Salathé’s headwall, but they are less flared and therefore much easier to jam.

We rejoin the Salathé at the end of the headwall. All tough spots are now behind us. Thomas follows up behind me. There are now two pitches left and less than one hour of daylight left.

We have long since given up climbing purely for the sense of success. We now push on because we have no other option as we have no bivi gear. With the end in sight, all we want is to be on top.

As the light begins to fade, I top-out and run a sling round a tree to belay Thomas up the last stretch. He reaches me at 18:56 with the last hues of light. Free Rider is completed in 15 hours and 25 minutes. Even after such a long day, we cannot help but dance around the tree in celebration.

We sit down after one minute. Leaning against the trunk of the tree, we feel the calm after the storm return to our bodies and souls. We sit silently next to each other, too tired to talk. But we are still awake for a while and sit dreaming with our eyes open.

The Salathé story doesn’t end there. In 2002 Tommy Caldwell became the first person to make an individual redpoint ascent of the Salathé Wall in a day (19 hours) and later Yuji Hirayama, also redpointing each pitch, lopped six hours off that time.
‘There is no doubt’ says Huber ‘that today the Salathé Wall is the absolute classic amongst the free climbing routes in Yosemite.

Note: On Salathé Wall the pitch that has stopped a number of determined free attempts is a steep corner just above the Ear. The final fifteen metres of this involves three sections of very hard climbing with a bridging, no-hands rest between each section where protection can be placed in pin scars and a thin crack . Though well protected, progress between these resting points is extremely difficult to accomplish with only pin scars for holds. Skinner (5 foot, 10 inches) says that he used a technique of locking his fingers and judging his thigh up on the wall to be locked into a friction position by his arm supported in the piton scar, thereby giving him critical additional height to reach the next piton scar. Rick Hatcher (who photographed parts of their ascent) confirms that he had practised this method earlier on old peg scars during a hard ascent on the Cookie Cliff. Huber considers this pitch, which he practised (with runner protection from above) during his initial Salathé Wall ascent to be at least 5.13c/d rather than the 5.13a grade given to it by Skinner. Huber does state in his book that Skinner’s and Piana’s account of their climb is credible and notwithstanding the grading error on this one pitch (which still resists attempts to lead it) should be accepted as the first ‘Team Free Ascent’ (two climbers sharing the difficult leads) of the climb.
 

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