This, here and now is where I’m supposed to be.

It wasn’t so much a thought as the sense that every part of my being was perfectly connected, focused on my movement through this space. My lungs burned, but I kept my breathing calm. Heart rate down. Movement controlled, precise. Each foot perfectly placed, hands settling into the undulations of stone, each move executed as choreographed: the dance up the stone. 

I put my hand into the last perfect jam of the hundreds of feet of perfect hand crack that make up the “Stovelegs” on the Nose of El Capitan. I moved left, my next hold a thinner crack. Then I reached and grabbed the cam. Perfect, I thought briefly, this being my tenth time climbing the route. The cam was right where I had asked her to leave it, to make that move just a little easier, more fluid, so I didn’t have to stop moving. 

Somewhere above, Quinn continued swiftly, just less than the full two hundred feet of our rope between us. I kept pace with her (barely!), moving up as she moved. The extra loop of rope was a buffer, for moments when I needed to pause while she was moving. Everything was done with that same level of precision. She was not leaving much gear to protect a fall. Any mistake could be catastrophic. I could not risk slipping or accidentally pulling on her. 

Further up, I paused. She was moving slower, somewhere in the chimney, beyond several ledges. I had a moment to think: if I remove this cam now, there won’t be any gear between us. But no matter, there are ledges. Surely a fall wouldn’t actually pull us completely off of the side of El Cap. 

I suppose it wasn’t about being where I was meant to be. It was about the fact that in that moment, I could not be anywhere else, because if my mind strayed it could cause the whole system to fail. It wasn’t that we were being reckless, it was just that our values had shaped our decisions. We put more value in experiencing these moments of fluid, continuous movement, more value on the speed of our ascent, than on our safety. 

We wanted to know: how fast can we climb the Nose? Right then and there, about one-third of the way up a 3000’ face of granite, my choices were fueled by this curiosity. Decisively, I pulled the last cam out and kept moving. The best I’ve ever moved. Fingers in the familiar crack, in just the right position, toe on this crystal, core tight, reach to the next hold, sensing each grain of rock. Focused, present, in flow. Perfect. Fast.

____________

I wonder what it’s actually like to be up there.

I was eighteen. My climbing partner and I were on our way from my home on the central coast of California to go sport climbing in the Eastern Sierra. We drove into the valley, stopping in El Capitan meadow to take in the view. The last light faded from the sky and headlamps were beginning to wink on, high up the face – big wall climbers making their beds for the evening. The top of the giant monolith shone white in the light of the rising full moon. 

I imagined sitting on a portaledge, legs dangling over two thousand feet of air, a thousand feet of silver-white granite still rising above me. My stomach flip-flopped. Someday, I vowed to myself. Someday, I would be one of those tiny lights up there on the wall. I will climb El Capitan. I really had to go be there, to experience it for myself.

At that time, I really had no idea what skills it would take or the equipment needed for such an endeavor. I had probably climbed three routes that were over one hundred feet at this point in time, but three thousand feet? Pretty much unfathomable, the idea was merely a bucket list dream. 

A couple of years later, I was beginning to learn to trad climb. A friend showed me photos of his recent climbing on El Cap. Seeing the look in my eyes and fueling my questions, “Just go,” he said. And he told me what gear I would need for big wall climbing. 

So I showed up. I got beat down more than ever before. Tired, hungry, thirsty. I tested the limits of my body and mind. I lived in the tension of exposure, day and night. I epic-ed. I climbed a “small” wall. I bailed from a “small” wall. I learned. It was hard. The climbing was hard, finding wall partners, being in the heat… so I followed the summer season to Tuolumne Meadows.

____________

There is a long ridge of granite that runs like a ribbon across the alpine sky. Hiking below it, we traversed nearly a mile along its base. At the southern end, we put on our climbing shoes and moved upward to reverse the mile, this time climbing along the knife-edge of Matthes Crest. I followed behind, unsure, questioning my capacity to move across so much exposed terrain without a rope. My hands slotted precisely in the crack, feeling each grain of rock, a toe pressing on a crystal of quartz. Move up, reach, connect with the crack. One move more. One perfectly executed move at a time, the ground began to fall away. Fifty feet, one hundred, three hundred... reaching the crest we moved northward, hundreds of feet of air below, to the east and west. Blue sky and the seemingly endless, sprawling alpine: peaks, lakes, meadows in all directions. My breath was the only sound to be heard. 

Moving this way demanded attention, it taught me awareness. Moving my body through this space created stillness in my mind. I was no longer concerned with insecurity of wondering if I could do it. The question was laid out across the ridge, behind and in front of me. The answer was each move. 

I felt the buzz of being fully awake for thousands of feet along this ridge. And the next was planned by the time we walked into camp that evening. The summer strung together miles of granite, endless movement, scrambles and handjams across the range of light. Absolute freedom. 

The possibilities were limitless. I began to explore with friends, then alone. I gained a deep understanding of my body’s movements and capabilities, an awareness of precision. I got scared, got into places I wished I wasn’t. And got out of those places, because I knew how. The Sierra alpine was my playground and I felt that I could do anything. 

But what could I do on the Valley’s big walls? Fueled by a curiosity for what was possible, I set out again, this time with that bucket list goal: to climb El Cap. Wall climbing was still hard, but it got easier. And after a couple of routes on El Cap, the goal became to climb it in a day. Then, climb harder routes in a day. And, can I climb it solo? Solo in a day? How fast can I actually climb it? 

____________

Then Quinn fell on the Nose. At this point there was a bolt between us, but it didn’t matter. She fell past me, hitting ledges and coming to a stop in the jumbled boulders at the bottom of the chimney. The rope never came tight. Perfection turned to catastrophe. I thought she was gone. 

I moved to her, to stabilize her and initiate the rescue. She survived something that most thought was unsurvivable. But her back was broken. Her spinal cord no longer communicates signals below her mid-back. 

What is it actually like to be up there? Gorgeous. Awe-inspiring. Incredibly fun! Terrifying. Awful. Stupid. 

As the weeks passed I tried to climb again. I suffered from visions of falling. A body (her body, my body?) falling through the air. I cried while top-roping and could find zero motivation for climbing. What is the point of doing something so dangerous? I began to ask: is it worth it? How could any of it be worth what happened to Quinn? I had never stopped to question if I should do these things or why I wanted to do these things. I just wanted to know what I was capable of. And I still wanted to know what I was capable of. The goals were still there, but the value was not. Somewhere along the way my values had become muddled with my goals and it was no longer obvious which stemmed from which. The chicken or the egg? 

Several of our friends decided that it was not worth it for themselves. I found myself morally grappling. I had to climb. Didn’t I? But I felt like I could not say “yes, it is worth it,” because it wasn’t fair. What happened to Quinn did not happen to me. What happened to me was different. I felt only emptiness. Questioning if it is worth it was like pulling on bare threads. My sense of self was beginning to unravel. It felt like an impossible question. 

____________

“Have you mourned the loss of that person?” Madaleine was referring to my former self: the carefree, playful human that loved scrambling through the mountains. It was an interesting question. I became curious about that person. I couldn’t be so carefree. I couldn’t unlive what I had been through, from Quinn’s accident to the loss of other friends in climbing accidents. But parts of my former self are still there. Which parts? And which parts did I need to let go of?

____________

I stood on the small ledge looking up at the Teflon Corner, the crux, the hardest pitch of climbing that I would have to do to climb El Capitan free. It is an aptly named, nearly featureless corner about two thousand feet above the valley floor. Each move requires perfect body positioning, intense core tension and a whole lot of belief in the improbability of fighting gravity with merely friction for holds. 

I was scared, but not because it was dangerous. But because of the intensity of the exposure. And because it was hard. I always had fallen on this pitch. And falling means failure.

Taking two deep breaths, I began up the familiar sequence. My palms pressed against the rock. Powering through my shoulders, I lifted my hips a little higher, slowly bringing my foot up, just under my hand. The exposure no longer existed; it was just me and the miniscule details of the wall in front of me. A slight shift in the angle of my hips, shuffle my palm to the next dimple in the smooth rock. Breathe. But don’t release core tension. The fear of challenge no longer existed; I was in it. Another subtle shift. Foot up, palm up, repeat. I reached toward the first real hold on the pitch, the final hard move. Feel my fingers connect, lock in. Heart pounding, muscles shaking. I could still fall. This is it. Breathe. Collect yourself! My inner voice yelled. 

It meant so much not to fall because free climbing El Cap seemed like the ultimate test. I thought it could show me what I am truly capable of. To succeed on this pitch would prove that I could do it. It would prove that after everything I’d been through, I still have what it takes. I couldn’t think about falling. I couldn’t think about failing. I willed myself to focus, to stay with the climbing. 

As I finished the pitch, a quivering tension grew from deep in my core. There is a fine line between excitement and anxiety. The physical manifestations of the emotions are the same. The subtle difference is in the mind. 

In that moment, the goal of climbing El Cap, free, became a real possibility. But this was just a practice run to work on the crux section. In order to accomplish the goal of free climbing El Cap, I would still have to climb every move for 2000’ up to this point perfectly, without grabbing a cam or hanging on the rope. Then climb the Teflon Corner. And another 1000’, with several additional cruxes. 

The intensity of understanding the whole thing, the enormous effort involved, pushed the sensation toward anxiety, then doubt. I knew what it’s like up there: how hard it is, how scary. I knew it was physically possible. And I knew the emotional tax of the desire to succeed. 

____________

From the safety of the meadow below, I look up in awe at what I like to call “the vertical sea of granite”: El Capitan. My mind drifts through past experiences. It is more like a sea than I ever realized. The memories pass in waves, ups and downs, vast exposure, a distant horizon that is certainly not the end of anything, with still so much unknown. 

Is it worth the effort? I wonder, pondering a free attempt. 

Curiosity is the fire of inspiration. But this question threatens to snuff the flames. It holds me back as I wrestle with the doubt. The impossible question, again. The question that attempts to weigh the value of one experience against another experience that could occur instead. As if any experience in life can be isolated from the course of our existence and placed on a scale. Is it worth it? is the wrong question.

I cannot quantify the experience of a journey up El Cap. The experience has no specific value. It is an experience that cannot be isolated and made separate from who I am. 

What’s it like up there? What part of me is still intact? What am I capable of? These questions pull me together instead of tearing me apart. They light the fire, bringing excitement rather than anxiety. These questions make me want to go. They don’t require a yes or no answer. Or any answer at all. Because it's never about finding the answer. It’s about asking the right question, then decisively following the curiosity wherever it leads.