El Capitan is one of the most well-known climbing destinations, thanks in part to Honnold’s recent free solo ascent of the route Freerider. But there’s another section of the rock that’s even tougher. The staggeringly steep, scarily blank Dawn Wall is statistically one of the hardest climbs in the world, with more pitches than every other free-climbing route on El Capital combined. It took seven years and 19 days on the wall for Tommy Caldwell to make the first free ascent (using climbing equipment for protection, but not to aid progress) up 3,000 vertical feet in 2015. “It’s like stepping off the edge of the earth,” Caldwell said about the experience.
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