by Anne E. Williams

Abram, Brad and I are training for aid climbing at Country Club Crack up Boulder Canyon. It was chilly when we arrived, but now the sun is coming up over the eastern side of the canyon and suddenly it’s warm enough to remove my outer layer.   

I’m standing on the ground, belaying, while Abram clips the aider into a cam and shifts his weight to bounce-test the piece. Bouncing up and down on a piece of gear to test it seems counter-intuitive, but the other option is to climb up the aider, get well above your last piece of gear, and then figure out that the piece won’t hold as you’re falling through the air. 

Abram is making good progress. We came out for a training day two weeks ago and he was much slower on aid. He has already worked out how to organize the new aid gear on his harness and how to move in a series of efficient steps to make upward progress. Clip an aider to a piece—bounce, bounce, bounce—transition to the new piece, unclip the aider, clip the rope in, step up the ladder, set a new piece, clip an aider to the new piece—bounce, bounce—repeat. The goal is to be able to aid climb a pitch on The Nose in 45 minutes (as opposed to the three hours it takes inexperienced aid climbers). 

by Anne E. Williams

I don’t know when the idea of climbing El Cap first started to take shape in my mind. From very early in my life as a climber, I have loved the history of routes. My heart yearned first for the great classics in Eldo like The Bastille Crack, The Yellow Spur, and The Naked Edge, and for routes like Durrance on Devils Tower in Wyoming. Something like El Cap has always been out of my league—a dream to be put aside like the idea of being a jockey (until I got too big), or the idea of being a ballet dancer (until I got too big), or the idea of being an actress (until the professors at college pointed out that I couldn’t act). I have always known that Abram would climb El Cap, but I assumed he would do it with one of the more accomplished members of our climbing “tribe” like Tyler, Arthur, or Ronie. 

On October 28, our climbing anniversary, I tell him outright that I want to climb El Cap. We’ve been drinking and he’s just had a giant steak so maybe he’s a little less sensible than usual because when I say it—“I want to climb El Cap”—he smiles and shakes his head yes.