Emily Harrington Free Climbs El Capitan's ‘Golden Gate'

Free climbing L-CAP is the very definition of hard rock climbing. I mean you're up there climbing super hard moves, 2,000 feet off the ground, sleeping on the wall, having this great adventure and it's historic. It's what people have been doing for decades. It's a benchmark achievement and I want to have that for myself. I've put a lot of energy in the last three years into learning how to trad climb. I've always had it in my mind that I would try to climb L-CAP. That was something that I wanted to do someday and since sort of delving more into traditional climbing and climbing on granite, that idea became more realistic and I finally feel like I'm ready to at least attempt to free climb L-CAP. I just had it in my head that I wanted to try Golden Gate. I really wanted to just experience L-CAP and really give myself a good shot of sending. I'm choosing to free every pitch because I want to say that I've climbed every single move. We're going to start from the ground and stay up there and just try to send hopefully in one push. Adrian is my boyfriend and he is also going to be my partner. Adrian's learning how to do this right here. Emily had this dream of freeing L-CAP and wanted a partner, needed a partner. And he has a lot of experience with climbing and in the mountains. I love thinking about every tea bag we're going to bring, every battery, how everything's going to work, worst case scenarios. Aside from climbing, it's a massive amount of effort. You have to have a lot of experience and a lot of knowledge. We're going to practice hauling now because we don't know how to haul. Adrian's never climbed a big wall before either. He's never hauled. We're trying to figure this out together. We spent the first day hauling all of our stuff. So we ascended some fixed ropes and hauled it all up with us. We're dealing with really heavy loads. We won't have to like rely on anyone else on the ground to bring us anything. We are going to start tomorrow and try to go from the ground to the top in one big push. My goal is to free climb every pitch cleanly. We just spent the whole day on L-CAP. This is day one of six. I feel like I put so much energy into this and I don't want to blow it. I don't want to disappoint myself. And I won't be disappointing to myself unless I totally choke. I've never done this before, but I think that's sort of the nature of climbing on L-CAP is there's so much uncertainty and you just have to go try. Like it comes to a point where you can't just keep wrapping down it and working the moves. You just have to go try. I kind of feel like I might have forgotten how to climb, but I'm sure that's not true. I was pretty anxious and nervous. Just the entire project felt like it was finally happening. That was actually a really big day for us. I think we climbed 15 pitches on that first day. We're just getting up and getting things ready. Today I'm really not looking forward to climbing the monster. I'm feeling a little bit more nervous and scared and anxious. The monster off width is something that's so scary and intimidating to me. You have to kind of wedge your body into this crack. Watching Emily struggle on the monster two and a half hours on the pitch, I didn't know if she could get through it and I really didn't think she could try it again. And it was a complete epic battle. I had to fight so hard every single second I was on that pitch. And mentally, physically, everything, it was completely and utterly draining. I kept having to remind myself to not panic. I honestly, I don't think I've ever exerted myself so hard on a single pitch of rock climbing. I sort of want to die right now. I felt like I fought super hard on it and it made me determined for the rest of the route. I did not escape the monster unscathed. I had two huge holes in my left elbow. There's some blood, there's some scrapes, there's some bruises that look like she's just been like beaten. Em's mental strength I think is what's gotten her so far already and I think she'll be able to push through sort of like the suffering that I think is to come. I'm glad it's over. Today took a lot out of me. I just really hope I can do the down climb. The style really changes after today and I just can't wait to see her start throwing down. Well the biggest question for me is the 512 down climb. It's rated 12c, it's a slab, felt super perplexing. That pitch had been haunting me just because I felt like it might be impossible for me and I didn't know if I could do it. I had a meltdown on the down climb for sure. Then usually when I get really upset I tend to let things go and then when I try again for whatever reason, maybe I'm a little more relaxed, things fall into place. In the end I managed to figure it out. In a way I guess it was a little bit surprising because in my head deep down I really didn't know if it was possible. It's a miracle. After pulling off the down climb I felt a lot more confident because that was the one thing that I didn't know if I could do. Once again it was go time, turning towards the next pitches. It was a super exhausting and epic day. Where else do you toil so much just with surviving then you get to climb 513, 2200 feet off the ground. It's just this massive challenge mentally and physically and emotionally. Two years ago I probably couldn't have even sent one pitch on this route. You have to be an all-around climber in order to succeed up here. I'm feeling a little rough. My body hurts really bad but that's okay. This is what it's about right? We were right underneath the move pitch which is the hardest pitch on the route. I have to try really hard and just keep it together and be mentally strong. I didn't have it that day and decided to take a rest day after that. I'm having some doubts but I really want to do it but I'm worried that I don't have what it takes right now. Emotionally the tension was just ratcheted so high. I still had 1200 feet of climbing ahead of me. There was one move that was sort of my barrier to sending 3000 feet of climbing. For me that's really really hard to deal with mentally. It was a huge struggle. I can't do this. I can't do it. Up there you're in a bubble that is just your team and you're responsible for yourselves and no one else really has any clue what you're going through in terms of suffering or success. One of the most important roles of a good partner is having them there to support you in those dark times when inevitably you're going to say I can't do it, I won't do it, I don't want to do it. She gets really sad, really bummed and really questions whether she has it in her. I became very emotionally wrapped up in the project. I felt like it was the hardest thing that I'd ever attempted to do in my climbing and in my life. I care a lot about the things that I put my time and energy into. Before she pulls off some big audacious thing she gets really sad, really bummed and really questions whether she has it in her. That was the only time I saw her say I can't do this, I don't want to do this anymore. I just can't seem to put it together. Skin is ruined. I'm bleeding from everywhere. I'm tired. Everything was wrong and yet she still had to find a way to succeed and that I think was a low point and I really didn't know how to help her to come back out of that. You know all we could really do is like we're here, we're not going anywhere, you need to find one more place that you can pull something out of. Em likes to bring us all to the darkest deepest place and then just throw down. That happened again today and I managed to send it at the end of the day which was a huge relief. I sent the pitch, continued climbing up through probably the last wide pitch called the Chicken Wing Chimney and it was absolutely terrifying and awful just like all of the wide climbing on El Cap. I feel super claustrophobic just even thinking about it. That evening I sent the Golden Desert pitch which is probably one of the most beautiful pitches of rock climbing I've ever done. I knew I could do that and I'm glad that I did and I didn't like mentally fall apart. There's like 40 more feet of hard climbing going right there that's all I have to do. Em Harrington had another little battle with and off with today and she took her little rug burn here and brought it to a whole new level. It's called passion. Today's our last day hopefully we will be on top this afternoon. When Em tops out she's gonna have earned every bit of it. I had to do the A5 traverse. It's probably pitch 35 and it's just a 13a 40 foot traverse. I woke up that morning and just gave it hell. I fell at the end right at the anchors. I learned at that point that on El Cap nothing is for sure until you're standing on the top. I just got in the zone and climbed the way that I know how to climb. So that pitch was the very last difficult pitch on the route. It was the barrier to the summit. This isn't the last hard pitch on Golden Gate. Oh my god I can taste the tequila. I suddenly was like it's done it's on like I started talking about partying again and all our friends were going to meet us to celebrate with us. Reaching the summit was just this complete emotional release. I can't really even explain what it felt like to stand on the top. It's a pretty surreal experience to have started on the bottom of a 3,000 foot cliff and spent six days on the wall giving it absolutely everything I had physically and mentally and emotionally. If you don't have a good partnership there will be no success. I was super lucky to have someone who was willing to go up there with me and not even free climb but just Jumar behind me and support me and belay me. She needs big audacious things to keep her motivated and psyched but there's something about her that actually loves totally uncertain goals that are completely outside of her scope of knowledge. Every day you have to give it your all there's no easy days there's no relaxing it's an incredibly taxing and hard style of climbing. This is by far the hardest I've ever seen Emily suffer. I was just incredibly blown away by the depths of like perseverance and emotional strength she has. In three years she's gone from completely failing on five nine crack climbs to freeing a route on El Cap. Just over a year ago I couldn't even fathom free climbing El Cap and I'm really really proud of what I did. There's a lot more that I want to learn and a lot more that I want to do and I would love to go back and and do it better but for right now I'm really satisfied.