IN HARMONY
Timestamps From the Day I Climbed Yosemite’s Triple Direct
Something in my subconscious recognized that I was dreaming.
The sky shrieked with whiteness, and Yosemite Valley’s walls bloated into peculiar proportions. Erik led the first half of The Nose on El Capitan. We simul-climbed, moving faster over rock than ever before.
Erik sped up. I began to feel caught in a vortex of momentum, like water as it prepared to roll over an edge. He stopped to clip a piece when, slowly, weirdly slowly, his body twisted into unbalance. He fell, rocketing headfirst down a corner, screaming with a bitten-off tongue.
Our fears were realized. We’d pushed it too far.
8:00 AM MAY 8TH
I woke up, blinking away strange visions. Sun rays sifted through the trees into my truck bed, and the jabber of tourists foreshadowed an average day around the Yosemite Lodge.
Stumbling into the Lodge’s restaurant, I sat with the usual cohort of dirtbags already awake. My climbing partner, Erik Andersen, was among them.
We discussed our sleep quality, mindset for the day, and last-minute preparations for our upcoming attempt at the Triple Crown linkup.
11:33 AM MAY 8TH
I woke up, blinking away strange visions. Sun rays sifted through the trees into my truck bed, and the jabber of tourists foreshadowed an average day around the Yosemite Lodge.
Stumbling into the Lodge’s restaurant, I sat with the usual cohort of dirtbags already awake. My climbing partner, Erik Andersen, was among them.
We discussed our sleep quality, mindset for the day, and last-minute preparations for our upcoming attempt at the Triple Crown linkup.
2:05 PM MAY 8TH
The 2,500ft South Face of Mount Watkins rose from Tenaya Canyon as a pale obelisk of mind-breaking proportions. We waited at the base of the wall for shade to arrive. The only sound was a river’s distant hiss. Looking across the canyon at Half Dome, I considered the next several hours.
How would we feel by the time we’re over there? I wondered. What accumulation of psyche, or fatigue, or other energies would accompany us? Would we even reach Half Dome?
I feared that last notion. There was the omnipresent possibility of faltering, and each unsuccessful outcome existed on a spectrum of seriousness.
Yet, we were here underneath our first wall, inside the inhalation prior to an adventure. We were at the whim of an inertia we’d been building for two weeks, relinquished from any concerns besides the coming battle.
The great kaleidoscope of moving pieces—planning, training, dreaming, and waiting—shifted into alignment. Erik and I organized the gear on our harnesses: ascenders and stirrups on mine, cams and draws on his. I pulled out my phone’s timer and counted down.
“THREE. TWO. ONE. GO!”
Erik began climbing Mount Watkins. Only the future knew where we’d be in twenty-four hours.
My breathing labored. Fatigue tightened my biceps as I climbed the second-to-last pitch on Watkins. Foot placements flopped, while the symmetry of my body repeatedly swayed beyond balance as I raced up the crack.
Echoing in my mind was the voice of Tommy Caldwell commenting on the Huber Brothers’ speed ascents:
“They were going ballistic. Like, out of control in terms of their speed…being really frantic.”
The fear and tiredness in my body confirmed I was climbing this way, but I couldn’t switch modes.
Almost at the top, I told myself. Then I’ll rein it back.
Katie Kelble’s voice crawled out of the forest. We reached her and started wolfing down the food and drink she had brought us—our only support during the linkup.
“Two hours faster on Watkins than during our practice run!” I said, hugging her. “And I’ve been thinking of this cold Coca-Cola,” Erik added. “It’s gonna get me SO PSYCHED for our nighttime Half Dome lap.”
We were ahead of schedule. All we had to do was remain consistent for the next two walls.
I’d sensed our slowing pace for some time. Near the halfway mark of Half Dome, Erik came into sight above me.
“Dude, my legs are cramping,” he said, “and I nearly fell off back there. It would have been bad.”
He spoke to me at the crux of his block: an insecure aid move to grab a bolt. As he stood on his gear, the piece popped out, and he fell.
“Ow, dammit!”
He tried again, and again it popped. Then a third time.
It’s over. We’re done, I thought.
Minutes droned uncaringly along. The prospect of failure seeped from the quiet, black air, heavy around us. Anxiety whirled in my stomach and my frustration bled out in the form of pestering Erik with unanswerable questions.
I offered to take over the lead, knowing that a change in dynamic would mark the end of our bid. Erik declined, stepped out of his aid ladders, and free climbed the crux move without another word.
The moon lit the night. I sat on top of Half Dome, gazing at the shadowed walls below me. How indeterminable we seemed compared to the continuing lifespan of Yosemite.
Erik mantled over the summit of Half Dome, dejected. I held my phone and watched the clock.
“Wanna know what our time is?” I asked.
“Do I?”
“Eleven and a half hours. We matched our four-hour split from practice!”
Erik’s shout of triumph reestablished our link as one moving machine. The dream remained alive.
El Cap’s summit flamed in the sunrise. I biked ahead of Erik, one hand on the handlebars, the other swapping between a sandwich and a Red Bull.
A strange sense wove around me. The night and prior afternoon had separated itself from the deja-vu of riding into El Cap Meadows during first light, ready to climb The Nose. I welcomed the familiarity, trying to believe this morning was like any other.
Unfocused eyes watched rock pass in front of my face. The sun reflected off El Cap’s porcelain stone, and I tried to concentrate on jugging even as most of my thoughts wandered toward the pressing heat.
Worrying that we had slowed again, I voiced my anxieties to Erik.
“I know, dude,” he said. “Trying my best to get us through.”
I felt bad, then, and resolved to not say anything more lest it be pure encouragement.
Erik was nearly finished with his last block of leading—only a few more pitches. Presently, he free climbed the final moves of the Lynn Hill Traverse.
A yell came from above. I looked up to see Erik making eye contact with me as he flew headfirst through the air. His face was warped with horror. He came tight against the rope and slammed stomach-side into the wall, an involuntary grunt escaping him.
“Shit, are you okay?” I yelled.
ERIK HAD FALLEN AT LEAST 30 FEET, HEADFIRST.
“I…don’t know,” he said. “I think so. Give me a second to find out.”
Fifteen seconds later, he started pulling back up the rope to finish the pitch.
Dan Teitelbaum shouted as he hung with his camera in space at the top of El Cap. Katie leaned over the lip and waved. Parties that I passed moved aside, cheering.
Minutes passed very slowly. I felt my arms cramping, my endurance reaching its threshold. But I was weightless.
Four pitches to go. Then two. One. I scrambled over the top, where Ben Sotero cheered and danced.
The realization that we’d succeed had been slow-burning since we swapped leads and checked the clock halfway up El Cap. There was no ultimate moment of triumph.
As Erik pulled over the lip, I stopped the timer. My best friends embraced us and that sweet, syrupy sense of fullness tingled my body. Erik drank a beer—something I’ve never seen him do and will likely never see again.
We basked on top for a while, staring toward Half Dome and the hidden Mount Watkins. They were miles away now, unchanged in nature, but no longer the infinitely large features they’d once been in my mind. All that rugged terrain was covered by our own hands and feet. The human-powered Triple Crown was an arbitrary, point-to-point undertaking of no importance outside the emphasis we climbers throw onto it. And somehow it was so significant to us, both in mind and body.
I thought of the first team to complete the linkup: Dean Potter and Timmy O’Neal. Their creativity allowed this pursuit: What vision! What daring and boldness!
And what a treat to follow in their footsteps, achieving a brief sensation of total oneness—with the terrain as well as with Erik—through the Triple Crown.
9:00 PM MAY 9TH
After a long-feeling descent off of El Cap and dinner at the Lodge’s Cliff Bar with our best dirtbag friends, I finally found my truck bed. It’d been 35 hours since I left it.
Sleep didn’t find me quickly, but when it did, it was dreamless.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chris Deuto is a multidisciplinary climber based in Colorado. He spends most of his time falling off short rocks, though he sometimes finds himself on Earth's wildest mountain faces. He's also a passionate journalist and writer.
