Yosemite 3 - Climbers on El Cap

With Shela's ankle black and blue, we decided to have a lazy day in the meadow below El Cap. The night before, we had been in this meadow star-gazing and had seen the lights of the climbers sleeping on the face of El Cap. We thought it would be fun to just relax there and watch.

Climbers' lights on El Cap. Note the party on the left
were climbing through the night!

It turned out to be one of our best days. The weather was perfect. Warm and sunny, with a gentle, fragrant breeze that made you feel all was right in the world ;) We lay there, reading books and looking up every 10 mins or so to survey the progress of the climbing teams on the face. It was enthralling to watch them working their way up and trying to imagine what it must be like on your 3rd day up there with 2000ft of sheer rock below you and 2 days still to go. We felt quite lame just sitting there...

Resting on a porta-ledge

Jumaring up the rope with the folded up ledge suspended below

In addition to the 4 teams we could see, was a woman climbing solo. She had taken food and water for 9 days as she would effectively have to climb everything twice! Once up, placing gear, then back down in order to climb back up again removing all the gear to use on the next pitch. A huge amount of work. And 9 days is a long time to spend on the wall. Not for the faint of heart. We watched her all afternoon making very slow progress.

The solo woman from afar

Climbing back down to her orange gear bag

I took this through the eyepiece of an 8-inch astronomical telescope someone had in the meadow. It was captivating to get such a close view of the climbers battling away thousands of feet above us. The sight of these people right on the edge, working so hard to achieve a dream, was inspirational. It left us reflecting on our lives and what we had acheived, and still hoped to.