It’s usually true that the journey is more important than the destination, but when the destination is the top of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, it feels like it matters a little less how you got there. Whether it took 5 hours or 15 hours or 5 days, just being up on the summit is incredible. Or maybe I’m just saying that because a few weekends ago was my first time on top of El Cap, and I’m very stoked even though I didn’t exactly climb it. More like “ascended”. But these are semantics.
The most well-known climbing route up the steep face of El Capitan is called The Nose. This route (as with most routes on El Cap) is considered a “big wall”, meaning it takes most people more than a day to climb and thus it’s common to spend the night on the wall. I’ve never climbed The Nose, but I have done a smaller big wall in Yosemite and I’m hoping to do a slightly bigger one this summer. Baby steps.
Will and his brother, however, have climbed The Nose. They did it a couple of years ago in four days and three nights, a normal amount of time for an intermediate-level climber. Now, in order to take their climbing to the next level, they need to get up the entire route in a single day, known in the climbing community as a Nose In A Day or NIAD.
After a couple years of dreaming and a couple months of prep and training, the brothers did their first NIAD attempt last month. They started around 2am and topped out a bit before sunset, successfully completing the full climb in 16 hours and 40 minutes while the rest of us on the support crew slept in late and then watched from the meadow below. It was an exciting time, but that’s not actually what today’s post is about.
Because they’re overachievers, the boys decided to reattempt the NIAD just seven days after their previous try. Even though the first one was successful and quite grueling, they wanted another chance to go faster. I think they mostly just enjoy the adventure, and honestly, that’s quite understandable.
This second time around, my sister-in-law and I decided to meet the boys at the top of the route to bring them extra water and snacks, and to have an adventure of our own. The hiking trail to get up there is annoyingly long, so instead we ascended via the route that climbers normally use to get down, called the East Ledges. This way, if we were too slow going up, we’d run into the boys on their way down and be able to turn around and descend the rest of the way with them.
The East Ledges ascent first involves a steep path through the forest, followed by 4 pitches (rope lengths) of jumaring up a rope, also known as jugging. Without diving into too much climbing jargon, jugging is basically the opposite of rappelling – instead of lowering yourself down a rope, you ascend up the rope by using devices that slide up but can’t slip back down. It’s a pretty physical and tiring process but also an efficient way to get up steep rock if the ropes are already set up. And luckily, on the East Ledges route, so many people rappel down that way that there are always fixed ropes.
After jugging up four rope lengths, the rest of the trail wanders through a short manzanita forest and then up endless bare rock. It’s not a particularly steep angle, but it’s relentless and my calves were burning by the time we got to the top. And I suppose that was a bit of a spoiler – us girls did indeed make it to the top of El Cap with plenty of time to spare before the boys arrived. Good thing that along with extra food and water for the boys, we brought kindles to entertain ourselves.
The top of The Nose route ends at a specific pine tree, but since neither my sister-in-law nor I had ever been up there before, we weren’t really sure exactly where to look. It seems so obvious from the meadow down below when looking up at the route with binoculars, because there is only one tree visible from that angle, but it turns out that in reality there are a lot of trees on top of El Cap.
We hiked around and found several potential route-ending pine trees, and then eventually settled in with our kindles to wait for the boys on a sunny rock. There may or may not have been some naps involved too. From the rock we could see several of the trees we thought were good candidates, so we were hoping that one of them would be the correct one.
Eventually we heard via the radio that the boys had one pitch of climbing left, and shortly after that Will announced that he had made it to the tree that marks the end of the route. Turns out we had guessed wrong and Will was nowhere in sight, but luckily we weren’t terribly far off either. Our sunny rock was only about 100 feet to the (climber’s) left of where the route ended.
We made it over there just in time to see Will’s brother come up over the edge and tag the tree, officially stopping the timer. This time the boys completed the climb a full hour faster than they had gone during the previous attempt, so there was much celebration along with some sighs of relief that we wouldn’t have to navigate back down the East Ledges descent trail in the dark.
Overall it was an absolutely incredible day. I was stoked to be on top of El Cap for the first time even though I haven’t technically climbed it yet, and the boys were grateful for the extra water and strawberry licorice (and maybe also the company?).
It’s the biggest adventure I’ve done to date with just my sister-in-law, and we had a great time figuring out some rope shenanigans while jugging up the fixed ropes and chatting about life and (mostly) not getting lost on the trail. Plus we didn’t have to wake up before the crack of dawn to start the day like the boys did, so we had enough energy to carry some of their stuff down. AND we had cooked dinner in the morning before we started our ascent and stashed it in the fridge. So I think the girls were basically the heroes of the day even though the boys did all the hard climbing.
| El Capitan Ascent Stats | Boys | Girls |
|---|---|---|
| Route name | The Nose | East Ledges |
| Start time | 2am | 11am |
| Total time | 15 hours, 40 minutes | 5 hours |
| Number of pitches | 28 | 4 (plus a ton of walking up steep slabby rock) |
| Vertical feet ascended | 2900 | 2900 |
| Number of hours spent chilling on top reading a kindle | 0 | 2 |
| Extra snacks and water carried up for the other party | None | A bunch |
| Impressiveness (scale of 10) | 10 | 10 |
Margaux Rhymes with Fargo 
July 9, 2025 at 15:58
I’d expect to see some webbing on that “route-ending pine tree” ;)))