Mayan Smith-Gobat and Niels Tietze attempt El Cap and HalfDome Linkup

I feel pretty lucky to have been a part of this trip. Shortly after filming Mayan break the speed record she let me know that she wanted to attempt the big linkup in the Valley. That is free climbing "Free Rider" 5.13a on El Capitan and "The Regular Northwest Route" 5.12 on Half Dome in a day (24 hour push). She wanted to climb it with Niels. I jumped on the opportunity for this one. I had heard many stories about Niels, not bad stories necessarily but stories like he doesn't like being filmed and he might not like the idea of you being on the wall with him. Mayan assured me with 50% confidence that he'd be okay with it. Well long story short Niels is one of the coolest, bad ass, humble mother fuckers I've ever met. I'll just leave it at that.