RunOut #34: Yosemite Is Still the Center of the Universe

The very first time I drove into Yosemite, I almost couldn’t wait to lay eyes on El Cap and Half Dome after so much time spent dreaming about one day climbing these formations. I paid my entrance fee and hit the gas on my Nissan Sentra, sputtering ahead until I found myself soon stuck behind a slow-moving rental RV, which was one of those RVs with a cheesy depiction of Yosemite’s famous tunnel view plastered across the back of the rig.

The irony of the moment was not lost on me, nor did it ultimately detract from the moment when El Cap finally came into view. It literally took my breath away.

Yosemite is the center of the climbing universe. It’s the place where style, ethics, rules, techniques, gear, myths, stories, and legends were born. And even after all these years, Yosemite is still very much where it’s at. What happens here is almost automatically interesting.

Which is why Chris and I are talking about what went down in Yosemite this past season. Big sends, grand failures, and run-of-the-mill world-class climbing on the best granite in America.

This is Andrew Bisharat, and I’m here with Chris Kalous and you’re listening to The RunOut. And today we’re geeking out on Yosemite and all the rad people doing rad things there. And before we begin the episode, I must include a serious shout out to one of the stories we missed, that of big-wall climbing pioneer Mark Hudon returning, at age 63, to Freerider, and damn near sending. He free-climbed all but 15 feet of the Freerider, which is definitely one of the best efforts of the year.

Hudon, of course, was one of the first people even to consider El Cap as a free-climbing project, exactly 40 years ago when he and his partner Max Jones made an audacious bid at free climbing the Salathe wall. The fact that he returned 40 years later and almost sent the Freerider Variation, is just awesome.

What an incredible story. What an incredible sport we have here. Gives me the all the feels.

OK, hope you enjoy this episode. On with the show.

PHOTO: Tara Kerzhner