Climbing The Shaft: Nate Murphy Gets Schooled On Big Walls And Massive Exposure

Hi I'm Nate Murphy and I'm kind of like a pretty mediocre climber who's just been trying to step things up a little bit. In the spring I came to Yosemite and I achieved like a kind of long-term goal of free climbing the West Face on the Leaning Tower and since then it was kind of like a logical progression, maybe just try something bigger and harder on El Cap. My friend Alex was super psyched on Muir, there's a route called the Shaft and it's a 33 pitch route, goes at 13c and it just has like loads and loads of really amazing looking pitches so i was quite keen to come and check it out the grades don't really easily translate into uk grades but if you just base like the midpoint e grade it's kind of like up 2e8s 1e7s 7e6s 11e5s 3e4s and 8e3 or lower so it's a pretty stacked wall so just packing to go up to El Cap the pitch three from the top is a 5.13 C which is 8a plus so it's pretty hard and just kind of like packing up the stuff into the haul bags we've got lots of ropes gear I'm just gonna hike up What are you doing? I can't even. I'm figuring out what I'm wearing tomorrow. Picking your outfits. That jacket. This hooks on. It's not a hat. It hooks onto the jacket. It's just a hood. Best thing about the haul bag, I've got my own sunshade. Oh yeah. Fixed lines. Such an amazing profile right here. We had a bit of an epic coming up here. A lot of tears. I got real scared down there, so any little bit of scary, I just got more scared than I've probably ever been in my life. It's not that big of a deal. When I walked up a slab, I cried the whole way. But we're here. This is a really sweet bivvy right in the top of El Cap. i love how easy it is to make fires in these places it's just incredible you can't really get better than camping out in the wilderness and having a coffee we'll have the fire and then we'll have like this amazing star show that the universe is going to provide us soon really amazing i'm just going to point the camera up so you can see um i'll just refocus it's just coming down now she's probably quite terrified it's her first time wrapping it and it's just gonna be crazy the exposure you get when you get over this edge pretty massive how does it feel Thomas it's good now that i'm here coming down the first two was like okay hold up Gruy you got me it's good now that we stopped i feel great it's awesome this is like the craziest view check out this pitch just totally epic warm perfectly beautiful corner and from that block down it's a really nice um 12b just unsighted that there's a warm-up say on this wall that is a good foot hold that's an average foothold that's a really good foot hold yeah coming up this is the critical section it just gets a lot smaller we're talking fingertips the low section of this pitch seems to be okay just need to sort out the next 15 feet and then maybe maybe it's doable yeah it's an awkward way to get get dressed. It's really hard this. Now it's linked two sections of the crux to get as hard and to learn how to climb this stuff. Another morning on El Cap. The crack is just wet. Just makes it so hard to climb. But I got a high point and I think if it was drier I could have got those five more moves to the kind of rest. It's a little frustrating. so hard for me to let my body relax onto the feet holds the tiny i think i can trust should be able to trust my feet more this is school i'm going to school right now i'm learning this stuff just jogging out now gonna go back down to the valley but what a place to be driving to do the facelift which is a kind of cleanup initiative um mostly or organized and arranged by climbers i think since it started they've lifted like a million pounds of garbage and trash and old cable and old industrial stuff from the valley so it's a really cool thing to get involved with and really great fun we've got our litter picking kits for the facelift assembly facelift and we're gonna go to Chapel Wall and clean that place up we're gonna boss it yeah welcome to another episode of Doo Doo Hunters today on Doo Doo Hunters we're gonna find some of the most famous spots We're doodooing behind rocks. Let's get it! Tama has found some underpants, some cigarettes, a jumper, some socks. Looks like some sicko just got behind a rock, smoked himself, filled some bags of soil, and took off his clothes. Who knows why, and who knows what we'll find behind the next boulder. That's why we are the Doo Doo Hunters! Plastic! What sicko dropped that? Looks, appears to be of some food. But wait, we've got some competition. let's uh let's make our way out of here before they see us we're probably on that turf look look oh me oh jeez i kept the top of our cap today but because the rock fall and they're doing some work they just closed the road for access so now i'm gonna have to hike around the road on the other side of the river then probably just cross the river wherever i can everything is coated in dust Absolutely crazy. It was a big rockfall. Might not be the best idea. Water is pretty cold, but this is a great place to cross. It's not too deep, just fast flowing. This is certainly one of the more interesting hikes into El Cap I've done. Man, what a mission. It's not as early as I should be in the morning, but whatever. I'm about to wrap in. What I've done is I fixed my rope to the anchor, but i left some slack so it's got some weight and then i'm sitting on this this is a micro sender and it just kind of like goes up the rope pretty easily this thing won't break so the worst case scenario for some reason if this device fails i'm gonna fall down hit this ledge a little bit and then come down to the end of this loop so i shouldn't die so i'm gonna aim for a 45 minute rest and try and get some power back but it's getting there i can feel it's kind of coming working out the feet there's just like one little section like three meters which i kind of fluff sometimes i just need to like work that out so amazing what i can see right now yesterday it was basically dry today it was almost every hold is soaking wet I ain't ******* beaske burnt as well i really worked hard yesterday i think i'm just gonna bail out of this place so frustrating such a long way to come up spend two nights bring all your food and your stuff and your water or whatever just to work for one morning big wall projects are really really hard work especially when you're punching a bit above your weight or trying to after linking the key crux sections together on that pitch i was kind of confident i could do it on on red point whether i could do it at the end of the wall was pretty dubious but at least i knew that the climbing was more or less within my ability my friend eli came to the valley um he'd never done a wall before but he was quite a strong climber so it was quite fun we just went up and we're just gonna get on it yes me and eli we're gonna have the pigs we filled our water we'll just basically go wall style working the pitches this is our food working our lunches lots of dried fruit fluff bars these protein bars have been in a flavor pretty good nuts so we're just gonna try and work out how we do it for breakfast and dinner she still needs to buy i don't know how much you think it is 20 pounds maybe Oh easily Yeah let's get up there there we go honestly I really want to lead it lean that would be vicious super yeah just proper Yosemite climbing that I tell you what I'm not good at it's really smoky in the valley there's fires over the rim and it's just every morning you get this kind of like super haze um the good part of that is it kind of makes it cooler for a little bit longer. Look at these jugging skills. Eli demonstrates how to jug.