[003] Breaking Ground - Part 2: Paraclimbing First Ascents
Transcript
Welcome back to Stick & Stone, I’m Sydney and this is part two of two of Mark Wellman’s story. If you haven’t heard part 1 yet, you’re missing out on the whole lead up to the climb on El Cap. If you start listening now you’re gonna be really underwhelmed without hearing the incredible journey Mark took just to get to the base of this mountain. So if you go ahead and listen and you feel unimpressed, I warned you. I did.
Alright, quick recap. Mark Wellman was something of a peak bagger leading up to his accident in August 1982. He and his friend were racing down their 48th peak in the Sierra Nevadas so they could get to camp before dark when Mark slipped and fell 100 ft (or 30 m). He landed on his back and broke his spine which resulted in the loss of movement in his legs. Over the course of seven years he regained his confidence, got absolutely jacked, went to college to become a Park Ranger, and landed in Yosemite National Park where he met the legendary climber Mr. El Cap, better known as Mike Corbett. In 1989, they hatched a plan to climb El Cap together which was obviously extremely difficult considering Mark couldn’t use his legs. So they came up with this really cool system using ascenders that would allow Mike to climb the route and Mark to follow after, essentially pulling himself up the entire mountain on a pull-up bar attached to the ascenders. When we last left off, it was April of ‘89 and Mark was having nerves about the ascent but Mike convinced him to try a shorter ascent to Heart Ledge at about 900 ft (or 274 m) off the ground, to camp out on the mountain for a night and Mark agreed. Their system worked flawlessly. Mark was so inspired by the climb that he hardly slept and by morning he had made up his mind. He was ready to climb the mountain.
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They set a new date for the climb: July 19, 1989. Mark needed a little more time to prepare (their test climb had shown him just how strenuous this route would be) and they both figured that less climbers would be on the wall come July when it would be hot. And they chose that specifically because it would mean there wouldn’t be a lot of people trying to climb on their route and getting blocked by their ascent because I think they assumed they would be going a lot slower than everyone else, so it was a very thoughtful choice besides the fact that it gave Mark more time to train. And it was lucky they changed it too because the day after they descended Heart Ledge there was a snowstorm that dumped a foot of snow on El Cap, so you know, sometimes plans change for the better, especially during seasons with lots of snow or rain.
The crowds in the park were growing steadily day by day as summer vacationers flooded the valley. Skies were clear and blue almost every morning with clouds slowly rolling in and out by midday, offering visitors some much desired shade as temperatures rose as high as 95ºF (32º C). In the early hours of July 19, before the sun had even begun to rise, Mark lay in his bed tossing and turning, too excited to sleep. At 5:30am he bounced into his chair and got ready. Everything was packed and stashed at the wall, so all he had to do was get dressed. From the back of his closet he pulled out an old pair of boots, still dusted from the trail on the last day he had ever walked. These were the shoes he wore when he fell and it seemed only right to wear them today. By 7:30 Mike was at his door and they were off to the base of the mountain. Cameras, microphones, lights, and journalists crowded the meadow before El Cap. Photographers snapped pictures and TV reporters clamored around the men to ask their questions. As they had done all spring and summer, Mike lifted Mark onto his back and carried him across the talus slopes to reach their ropes, and the reporters followed. They carefully but quickly got into their gear, checked and rechecked their knots, straps, and buckles and at the sound of a half dozen camera shutters clicking Mark made his first pull on the bar. 1 down, 6 inches of progress, only 6,999 chin-ups to go.
The route they chose is called The Shield. It’s to the left of the Nose, rising 700 ft (213 m) of near total slab. The headwall is a bit overhung with a solitary thin crack that leads climbers up to the top. 30 pitches in all, starting at Salathé Wall (the first 3 pitches being known as Freeblast), is rated A3+ for aid climbing which ranges 5.9 to 5.11b for sport although its overall difficulty is rated about 5.9. The reason they picked it is because the wall is super steep, smooth, and almost a direct route up El Capitan which is ideal if your plan is to do pull ups up an entire wall. Other routes have a lot of traverses that would not be possible with the system they rigged.
On any big wall climb there’s a lot of gear and foodstuffs to pack and theirs weighed a whopping 225 pounds (102 kg), the heaviest item being their water, which was about 12 gallons (or 45.5 litres). In all they brought 4 ropes, 45 pitons, 2 hammers, 175 carabiners, 25 cams, 20 wired stoppers, 66 short nylon slings and a kit for drilling bolts into the rock; for each of them a sleeping bag, rain jacket and pants, pile jacket, polypropylene underwear, wool hat, gloves, headlamp, and portaledge (which is basically a small tent like a cot with walls designed to be hung from the anchors); and for food there was canned pineapple, peaches and fruit cocktail, hard salami, cheese, bagels, sour balls, Fig Newtons, Gatorade, and Beanie Weenies. Now, I did not know what Beanie Weenies were until I looked it up and I mentioned this last episode, but it’s exactly what it sounds like, it’s beans and sliced up weiner dogs in a can. So, as a treat for you… I got some! First off, I was shocked they actually had these at the store because I thought the name of them sounded very 70s and I was sure this was a food lost to time, but nope, they had a whole bunch of them on the shelf next to cans of pork and beans. And when I saw the cans next to each other, I realized it wasn’t such a weird novelty food, but still, this seems more like something I would make up if I only had two foods left in the house and didn’t want to go to the grocery store. So I’m gonna try this straight out of the can cold like they ate it!
Ok, that’s actually not that bad!
Let’s get back to the story. Luckily, all of their heavy gear had already been hauled up to the top of their first pitch at Mammoth Terrace which stretches out to about three picnic tables laid end-to-end, and probably one of the biggest ledges on the wall. So they were able to get up the first 10 pitches pretty quickly and camp out on Mammoth, but it was so hot already in the valley that they felt really drained and just sat there for 4 hours until the sun went down. A few friends and an NBC cameraman joined them on the ledge that evening to hang out and see them off on their big journey. And I think that’s so sweet. To have friends cool enough to climb up there with you just to wish you well on the long road ahead is a very caring thing to do.
In the morning, Mike carefully put all of his gear in order on his harness and around his shoulders so he wouldn’t have to waste energy looking for things, especially not on some of the more precarious holds. They packed up, checked their ropes and Mike started the climb with Mark belaying below. With the sharp senses of someone who’d climbed for a very long time, Mike always seemed to know exactly what size piton he needed, no time wasted trying one size and then another. He slid a knife-blade piton into a thin crack, tapped it gently with the hammer to set it in place and then harder to drive it in until it rang like a bell, the sound of a well-placed piton. Mike clipped his carabiner onto it and then his rope, attached the étriers and climbed to the top of the nylon ladder to the next highest crack he could reach to repeat the process over again. Everything they used was attached to them including items like the hammer. If it were to slip from Mike’s hand it could easily fall and hit Mark or generally go tumbling off the wall which could hit someone below and cost them precious gear. And they’re also tied to the wall at all times, even and especially when they sleep in the portaledges.
Mark felt the rope slide through his belay device in regular intervals until Mike was fifty feet above him and the rope suddenly stopped moving. He called up to Mike to see what the hold up was. Mike yelled back “watch me” as he worked his way through a difficult section. But it didn’t take long for him to get moving again. After an hour and half, nearing the end of the rope, Mike shouted “off belay” and a few minutes later he was rappelling down their static rope to meet Mark again. Now it was Mark’s turn to climb. He grabbed onto the bar and did his chin-ups. It was much hotter now that dawn was far behind them with the full morning sun heating the rock. Mark’s legs and elbows scraped along the wall as he made his way up, though of course they were safely protected by his rock chaps and elbow pads. After 75 he took a breather and, against better judgement, looked down. He was so high off the ground now that it caught him off guard. The sudden jolt of fear renewed his strength and gave him the energy to go the 225 more chin-ups to the anchors. While Mark climbed, Mike used the ascenders to pull himself back up his ropes so he could clean the pitons. He had already tied one of the haul bags to the ropes, so when the two men met at the anchors they were able to attach the ascenders to the anchor piton to pull the bag up. Once that was done, Mike had to rappel again to attach the second bag to the ropes, ascend again, and haul the rest of their supplies up. Mark was helping pull up the bags, but Mike essentially had to do the bulk of the climbing, going up, down, up, down, and up again, and so they joked that Mike would end up climbing El Cap three times when they finally reached the top.
On the third day, they had to climb up a chimney. On the first go through it, Mike had no problems and found it fairly easy so he got an idea. Once Mark reached anchors at Grey Ledge, Mike was ascending the chimney for the second time with one haul bag attached to his waist and the other on his back to save time. It was too late though when I realized, in the chimney, that he was stuck. He wiggled, he leaned, he cursed, and all that served was for the bags to put more pressure on his chest and pin him harder into the rock. Mark hollered down saying he wished he could help, but seeing that there was no way he could, reminded Mike to slow down and think. Mike continued to thrash in frustration, finding it hard to breathe, bloodying his knuckles, and feeling panicked when the pressure increased on his solar plexus, until finally the wiggling got him loose enough and he popped out of the chimney. By the time Mike reached Mark he was done. So they quit for the day right there.
On day five they came to the point of no return, the thing that had been weighing on them for days, the Shield Roof—an overhang jutting out 25 ft (or 7.5 m, 4 persons long) from the wall with an exposure of nearly half a mile straight down to the valley floor (about .8 km of open air). The prospect of climbing this was scary in more ways than one. For a shorter guy like Mike (who was 5’7” or 1.7m tall) the anchors felt far apart and he had to rely mainly on rotting slings left by previous climbers to make his way out into the nothing all while the blustering wind whipped the end free rope and eagerly ripped at his clothes. At each gust, he waited until the wind died down, costing precious energy. And then he was out of sight, over the lip and more terrifyingly out of earshot. The rope was all he had to communicate with Mark. The rope fed out in intervals and finally stopped. Mike was off belay and rapping back down in minutes. Mark had to pull him back in under the overhang. They switched off and revered roles. Mike had hold of the ropes now and slowly lowered his friend out from the wall and over the abyss. The wind grew louder as he went out but Mark could hear something else. He looked around and then he saw it: 1900ft below was a giant crowd cheering him on. Mark’s muscles lit up and even while the blasts from the wind came barreling over the granite expanse he rocketed over the lip and away from the fear, committing himself to the third leg of the climb.
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The next day saw another crux, Groove Pitch, one that Mike remembered from a cautionary tale. The crack running up this part of the wall was extremely long and thin, and a friend of his had experienced one of the scariest things a big-wall climber can face. He’d been moving steadily up the crack and just one move before he would’ve reached the top, the piton holding his étriers in place popped out, and then the next one failed, and then the next one, and on and on all of them got pulled out from the crack, plunging him down the wall. Fortunately the belay rope caught him but only after he’d taken a massive 75 ft whipper (nearly 23 m to think about your life in freefall). And if you don’t know, that’s called a zipper fall when one piece of gear after another fails and is most typical in forms of trad climbing, although I guess that could happen on a sport route as well if for example the bolts are super old and rusted and pop out. Either way, very scary. But Mike went up this section with no problems at all, at least not climbing. He did however have some other trouble. One of his pitons went in like usual but as he hammered it a sliver of steel broke off and, what Mike assumed was dust getting into his eye, was actually microscopic shrapnel from his piton. Mark could see something stuck in there and it was all red, but Mike ignored the irritation in his eye, too thrilled to have conquered another fear.
That night, their radio crackled and Mike answered. A ranger told him his family was at the park. Mike hadn’t seen any of them in over a decade, and most of them thought he’d probably died. While that notion broke his heart, he was filled with warmth again knowing they had seen him on the news and rallied the Corbett clan together to watch him scale the wall on probably the most significant climb of his life. They arranged to meet in the valley after he summited for a decades overdue family reunion. And that is the point I almost cried. I’m not a big book crier by any means but that was a really sweet moment. I mean for your family to assume you’re dead because you’re just this black sheep dirtbag who’s hippied off to some National Park to climb your way to death is just awful. And I’m so glad that when they saw Mike on the news they didn’t just think “Oh wow, he’s alive. Whatever.” They made moves and got themselves back into his life again. That’s some really good family. Of course he’d made a family out of his friends at the park and he had his girlfriend but that’s something different to have the people who knew you growing up to come back and claim you proudly as one of their own. It’s moving.
There was another 900 ft to go (274 m) to the summit. While they had planned to reach the top of El Capitan on day 7, they hadn’t accounted for just how tired they’d be. The sun was beating down on their backs, draining the energy out of them and scorching the granite. They had plenty of water and food left, but in this heat they hadn’t felt particularly hungry. Each bite was forced down and washed with thirst quenching gulps of water. But even as they were wearing thin, the rhythms of the climb had set in, so much so that Mark hardly felt the fear of the height anymore and instead relished in the ever-expanding view that came to meet them. The higher they rose, the grander the vistas became, spreading out Yosemite valley, the whole of their small world, at their feet. But as the day wore on they decided to stop early and camp one more night—they were too tired to push and felt comfortable extending their stay on the wall. That evening, ropes dropped down and they were met with a small crew of NBC cameramen and a couple cans of Pepsi. While Mike knew his parents had heard his story through the news, the full impact of their broadcast hadn’t yet hit Mark. Talking to the news crew he learned that all the networks had come out and realized that their story was national news. The NBC guys said they’d heard mention of a TV movie being made about them which they both thought was extremely funny considering the week before they had just been two climbing bums with a crazy idea. Mike laughed it off and said “We still have to finish the climb.”
The next morning, one NBC guy returned and told them to leave the gear, they’d take care of hauling it up. Mark and Mike were excited, knowing there’d be no more heavy loads, especially for Mike because remember he was climbing up three times just to pull up their stuff. There were four rope lengths to go and they flew up them. And then Mike was standing on a ledge near the summit. He turned to Mark and told him to hop on his back, just as he had at the approach days before. It was still a climb but they were off the sheer vertical face. Mark put his arms around his friend’s neck and Mike strapped their harnesses together. After 8 days, they were bony, unshaven, and Mike’s gait felt wobbly like a man stepping on land after days at sea, but Mark had total faith in him. They made their way up the rock and with the ground growing more even, Mike flung off the rope. And then they were on the slope with loose granite covering the ground when Mike lost his footing. Mark’s heart stopped and he flashed to the night he was alone on the mountain, sprawled on a cliff with a broken spine. The careless second that changed his life was not unlike this slope on this gravel. But Mike recovered himself after a short stagger and the moment was over before they could panic. A minute later they were at the top, met by an army of people: the reporters, rangers, and of course their friends. Mark pumped his fist and camera shutters clicked simultaneously. Someone opened a bottle of champagne, the questions came flying, and Mark eased into the moment, no longer anxious to speak to the cameras with the exhilaration and accomplishment of the climb behind him. They had just made the first paraplegic ascent up El Capitan.
Mark was helped back to his cabin by way of horse. He strapped in and rode his way down the mountain. As he made his way, Mike got ahead on the trail and while he waited for Mark a woman came up to him. She said six years ago today, July 26, 1983, her son had taken his own life in Yosemite. And every year since she would return on that day to remember him and cry. But when she arrived this year and saw Mike and Mark’s climb she didn’t cry. It inspired her and so she planned to return next year to celebrate her son’s life instead of mourn his death. In witnessing their climb, this woman’s life was changed, and it was at this moment Mike realized their private adventure was no longer just between him and Mark. In his words “it belonged to everyone.” And that’s the moment I actually cried! Finishing this part of the story (because there’s still a lot more and more climbing to come) I was so shocked how large of a figure and how much change Mike went through. It was so surprising to me that he turned out to be the second hero of this story 145 pages in. I absolutely love how their friendship started out so awkwardly and turned into this beautiful thing, like a work of art, that other people could see and enjoy and be changed by.
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Seven thousand pull-ups later, a hot shower, and a trip to the eye doctor to remove the steel shards from Mike’s eye, the pair were being invited to all kinds of media engagements. Mike had just reunited with his family and was seeing them off when an invitation came from the President. Soon, they were on a plane bound for Washington. When they arrived a car brought them to their stay at the Washington Hilton where they were led to the Presidential Suite. And I don’t know how it is now, but they basically described this as a small palace with giant bedrooms, a full living room, and fully stocked fridge and table of food. And not the cheap stuff, like really fancy good food and drinks. The next morning they met George H. W. Bush (that’s the older Bush, not the one from the early 2000s) and presented him with the American flag they’d brought with them on the climb. They had some time to talk but it was kind of like going to see Santa, both in that they met some old white guy and that there was very little time to say what all they wanted. Later that day, they’d have a much more interesting conversation with a surprise guest at their suite. Erin Broadbent wheeled up to their door and she introduced herself as the girl from the magazine. If you remember from last episode, Mark had gotten inspired to climb again from an issue in the mail from Sports N’ Spokes and Erin was the covergirl, another Park Ranger like himself, that he’d seen. They spent the rest of the day hanging out and touring the monuments and memorials together with their host and her friend Kay Ellis, an advocate for handicap access in National Parks.
I mentioned this before but I have to say it again, Sports N’ Spokes sent me that cover image so fast after I emailed them. I put it on Instagram too so you can see it if you’re not watching the video version of this episode. They are so cool! Shout out to Christopher Di Virgilio for sending me the PDF, you’re too sweet!
After Washington, they went off to New York to appear on CNN and the next day they were NBC meeting Tom Brokaw (who, if you are too young to know or you never watched SNL reruns, he is one of the most charismatic news anchors ever, such a lovely disposition with a very calming dad voice to read out the news). And they got to watch the Late Night Show with David Letterman from the green room where they rubbed shoulders with some famous folks, one of them was Andie McDowell (known then for Sex, Lies, and Videotape and later for movies like Ground Hog Day and Four Weedings, And a Funeral).
When they got back to Yosemite they were just two park employees again but they were entirely changed by the experience. Beyond the visitors recognizing the guy checking their park passes and the guy swabbing the floors, they were known by all the climbers, including one of the most famous in the park, Warren Harding. Not the late US President, much better, the climber who led the first team to climb El Capitan and made roughly 28 first ascents in Yosemite including one on The Wall of Early Morning Light (which was shortened to the more familiar Dawn Wall which was free by Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson, Harding did it as an aid route before it had become more bolted and he did it in hiking boots, that’s no shade to Tommy and Kevin, both teams did an extremely difficult ascent in two very different ways).
Warren wanted to climb with Mike which was such a thrill because this was his all-time big-wall hero. He was 65 years old at this point, becoming the oldest person to climb El Cap that November. They retraced Warren’s 1958 route, 31 years to the day. Over their week on the wall, Warren would pour himself a brandy each night and tell them story after story from the old days in Yosemite.
After a whirlwind of publicity and relishing in the perks of fame, Mike and Mark were back to planning their next climb on the most iconic peak in the park, up much more treacherous walls: Half Dome. This time, they leveraged their fame to stage the climb as a fundraising benefit for the Boy Scouts of America and Yosemite Association so they could raise money for their disabled scouts program and park access projects. The publicity got a bit out of hand and the Park had to step in and tell everyone to chill but it was for good causes. And Mark himself didn’t entirely love the sell-out quality that it brought but he had decided he was going to quit the Parks Service after this climb to pursue a career as a full-time athlete and it’s not always a very lucrative thing. Like most jobs, only a few people make most of the money, so the only way Mark was going to be able to set himself up for a steady income in sports was to play ball with advertisers and I’m gonna bring that up later, but for now, let’s get back to the climb.
It was September 4, 1991and they were setting off for Half Dome with Mike leading on foot and Mark taking a less steep route on his mule. For the first time in a while, Mark felt very free, exploring parts of the park he either hadn’t seen in a long time or had never seen. They met further along on the trail when they got to the steep slope where the granite slabs were covered in loose gravel, and at this point they were already very high up so a fall at the steeper points could land them back in Yosemite Valley over 2,000 ft below (a 610 m tumble). Luckily, they had brought a four-man team from the Yosemite Search and Rescue crew. Their friend, Ted Farmer, the gym manager and a hulking mass of muscle standing over six feet tall with thighs the size of telephone poles, had come along as well to carry Mark over this tricky terrain. To mitigate any risks, the two men were tied together and the Search and Rescue guys went ahead, setting up ropes to belay the men up the slope. When they finally reached the base of their climb, they looked up at the immense stone wall before them, stretched out to the sky, making El Cap look more like a playground. Mike had spent the week before preparing the first pitch and hauling their gear just as he had two years before. With their harnesses strapped in and the gear stashed above them, the pair said goodbye to their party and began the long trek up their route: Tis-sa-ack.
The beginning didn’t start well. Each piton Mike placed went in with a dull thud, not a high ring, which is not what you want to hear. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re too unstable to put weight on but they’re definitely less safe and this wasn’t to do with how they were placed so much as the rock they were placed in. Half Dome has rotten, crumbly granite, which weathers faster than other compositions of granite. The reason its shape looks like half of a dome is because it originally formed from a cooling magma chamber into what is called a batholith and it’s characterized like an onion because the magma cooled at different rates and formed layers like onion skins which, when exposed to weathering such as glaciation, causes those layers to peel off. So, basically it’s not dissimilar from the process of firing pottery in a kiln, like a cup. The type of clay, how it’s fired and cooled, and the use of it over time all affect the shape and wear of the cup. Half Dome was made up of a particular type of granite and cooled in a certain way that makes it prone to crumble more easily than other mountains, and it’s also been worn down be glaciers, and although the glaciers aren’t in Yosemite valley today, they were there not so long ago and their effect is still seen in the rocks today.
The slow progress of setting pitons that didn’t want to stay wore on Mike, that and all the media that’d morphed their climb from harebrained adventure into commercialized entertainment. But on the wall, it was just him and Mark and days of climbing ahead, so he kept at it. But after hours and hours of work they’d only made 150 ft of progress (46m in all). It was slow and grueling setting pitons through the Zebra, the overhanging arch on the lower half of the dome that’s covered in black and white streaks. These streaks of crumbling granite are said to be the tears running down the wall from the face of Tis-sa-ack (an indigenous Ahwahnee woman turned to stone by the Great Spirit)—for whom the route owes its name. It wasn’t much to show for a day of climbing, but the day was wearing out and ominous black clouds were rolling in. They set up the portaledges and broke out a can of Beanie Weenies. Just as they were sitting down to eat a flash and clap of thunder reverberated through the valley. Caught out high on the ledge of a mountain, sat in a metal frame cot with iron, steel, and aluminum climbing gear hung around them, the pair of climbers shuddered in their bones with no way of escaping the storm. The exposure of thousands of feet of air beneath them paled in comparison to the exposure to the elements. They had no choice but to endure the storm.
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Rain came pouring down in torrents. Luckily, the Zebra’s overhang above them created a protective arch. A wash of waterfalls that hadn’t been there in the day were cascading off the mountain and yet they stayed dry up against the wall watching the rain spill down the overhang like a gushing faucet 20 feet in front of them. As they drifted off to sleep, the storm sent gusts of wind that tossed them on their portaledges. Though tied in safely, there was little rest to get when each blast of air woke them from a dream of free falling. By morning, there was an iron sky above them and a serpentine cloud wrapped around them, holding the mountain. Shouts sounded from a nearby route as they prepared for the day ahead. A party of climbers were rappelling down the mountain, turning back at the sight of bad weather. While they also might’ve heeded the weather in these conditions on any other day, there was too much pressure riding on this climb. And besides, seeing able-bodied younger climbers turn away from the mountain only served to spur them on—giving them much needed motivation in the midst of unforeseen challenges.
Luck was with them as they eased out of the overhang and onto the headwall. The sky broke and streaks of sunshine warmed their backs—a welcome feeling they enjoyed in contrast to their days of unbearable heat on El Cap. The luck ran out fast when Mike suddenly started vomiting that night. He’d somehow come down with a stomach flu (we will not blame the Beanie Weenies) and he filled a ziploc bag with puke, sealed it, and tossed it off the mountain. So gross. I hope to god no one was there on the trail below. How awful would that’ve been? Out of nowhere this hot bag of I-don’t-even-wanna-say-what drops on or even near you and explodes. Ugh! Just disgusting. You know, poor deer too! Poor chipmunks, poor snakes! Poor whatever creature may have had to experience contact with that. Anyway, Mike emptied out everything from his stomach into even more baggies, got little sleep, and felt no better until around noon the next day. Weak as he felt from being sick, Mike got back in the flow and continued to work with that Herculean strength he always seemed able to somehow summon. Only one ledge higher, just 30 ft (9m) from where they started, Mike called it a day.
On their fifth day, they came to a particularly high crack. As I mentioned, Mike isn’t very tall and since a lot of routes are plotted by tall men, some of the beta, as in places with high reaches, is impossible without some witty maneuvering. This route in particular was first mapped by Royal Robbins in 1969 (a legend in Yosemite and a pioneer of early American rock climbing)—I have a book on him so we’ll definitely come back to talk about him in a future episode). Standing on his toes at the top of the étriers and leaned out as far as he could be, Mike pulled out a Friend—a spring-loaded camming device which is somewhat like the idea of an expansion screw in that it can fit through a small opening but then expand and lock into place. When the trigger is pulled it contracts so it can fit into a crack and when it’s released the cams expand to grip the rock. The only problem with these is that they exert a lot of frictional force on the rock when they have weight put on them so they need to be well-placed in solid rock, and we know Half-Dome is not the most stable type of granite. He leaned out, holding his breath as he gingerly placed the Friend, and it held. He stepped into the étrier to follow the crack and pop! The Friend sprang loose and he was sent sailing off the wall with 3,000 ft of air under him. Mark pulled down tightly on his belay device and caught Mike a second later and 20 ft (6m) down the wall. Incredibly, the pair had never practiced a lead fall before and the entire climb up El Cap had been without incident, so Mark had never had to catch his partner. He clearly knew what to do but I can’t believe they never thought to practice a fall just considering Mark has an odd set-up. I’ve caught lead falls that pull me, the belayer, off the ground and into the wall where I have to kick my feet out to stop myself from face-planting, so I’m really surprised they didn’t test that before.
After the shock wore off, Mike felt the frustration rise as he made his way back up the way he’d just come to face the same crack again, only this time he used a piton. The wall still wouldn’t give him a good ring from his hammering in the piton but he had to trust it. He slid delicately into the étriers and it held, at least long enough for him to take his hammer and beat the piton deep into the rock.
Day 6. They were making slow progress. They’d told the media they’d summit in a week but were hardly half-way up and it wasn’t going to get easier. Their radio crackled at 8am and their friends down in the valley alerted them to a cold front blowing their way with snow on its heels. As the dark clouds rolled in they made a pact to keep going but it was a quiet start to the day as they held their breath for the bad weather coming in. They climbed higher than they had in days through late afternoon. This was the worst section of the route where rocks were loose teeth at best. Royal Robbins had noted this part of the route as a “stone fence without mortar” and Mike had to use every trick he knew. At one point, the piton below him popped while the one connected to his étriers held. At other moments he was left with nothing secure and was forced to use steel hooks to grasp the rock like the tips of fingers on the shallowest of crimps. Wobbling up the nubbins as the wintry winds picked up took a strength of will pulled from deep within, especially as, first snow, the small hailstones, pelted the wall. The storm didn’t feel heavy though, the roar quickly turned to a growl, and then gave way to another sound entirely—bagpipes. They’d made it to the top of the third pitch and just set up camp when Amazing Grace came sounding up from Mirror Lake far below. They knew the musician and beamed knowing their friends had gathered to send a warm message of encouragement up to them. Mike took off his headlamp and flashed the light down towards the music to send a wave back to their friends. The spirit of the climb rose again in their hearts.
The following days brought fair weather again but now that they’d been on the mountain longer than planned, by day 9 they were rationing. Their stomachs felt tight, growling uselessly, and their clothes hung loosely over their narrowing hips and shoulders. By the tenth day they were slowing down in progress, with less than a quarter to go but unrelentingly difficult rock and ancient bolts to contend with, little food in their stomachs and days of cold and climbing sunk deep into their bones. Day 11, the radio check in went the same as the day before, and the day before that: When do you think you’ll make it to the top? We’ll get there when we can.
Day 12. They were so close to the end they could smell it. Mike was leading the second to last pitch, dreaming of that night when he’d be home, enjoying a hot meal, bath, and bed. But as he climbed, the pain in his right arm grew. For days, it had been growing, first from his elbow then throbbing outward until all his thoughts revolved on the numb and aching pain that’d taken over from hand to shoulder. Days of leading without being able to swap with Mark, setting pitons, each hammer strike sending shock waves up through the handle, had put immense stress on his body. In the early afternoon they were just 75 ft from the top, but it was 23 m of overhang projected out like the steep prow of a ship. It was with heavy hearts and weary bodies that they set up camp for the night, reaching to the bottom of their food sack for the last two morsels of food: a can of pineapples and a breakfast bar. They split the can and saved the bar for morning.
Day 13. Mark woke up exhausted but was used to it by now and fell into the flow of motions, pulling on the rock chaps, packing up the sleeping bag and portaledge, setting up for the belay, when out of nowhere a body plummeted off the top of the rock. Mike cried out “Somebody’s fallen!” and they watched in horror as the figure dropped out of sight. Before they could act, there was a whoosh and a white spot appeared below. The jumper had pulled their parachute, but he was still too close to the wall and in danger of death when his parachute scraped the rock. He deftly maneuvered away and drifted off over the pines at Mirror Lake. I wondered if this could’ve been Dean Potter because I just watched the documentary The Dark Wizard so I went backed and looked but he started BASE jumping sometime around 2002 and then I looked up some more dates and figured out he was 17 when Mark and Mike were on this climb, so definitely no overlap, but I’m sure he was following the news coverage of it. Anyway, whoever this poor soul was, Mark called them in on his radio because he’s a Park Ranger and got them arrested! I hope you don’t hate Mark for this, I just think it’s really funny cause it’s exactly what you’d expect of a Park Ranger and that’s who he is even when he’s climbing and exhausted.
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Mike was pushing hard to get them up the last pitch, precisely slotting pitons and unclipping the rope, which was nerve-inducing but relatively safe to reduce the rope drag and make pulling the rope up a little less heavy. And in just over an hour he hit the bolts. The fear vanished as Mark’s single-minded, animalistic drive took over. Clipping in his pull-up bar to the free-hanging rope he swung out over the void without fear. At the first pull, the tiredness rushed out and a new current of energy rushed in to fill its place. He lashed the rope with his bar, knocking out pullup after pullup without missing a beat. Thirty from the top, 29, 28, 27, he could see his friends poking their heads out over the ledge; 19, 18, 17, Corbett was grinning; 5, 4, 3, 2, Mark reached the top of the pitch, dragging himself onto the last ledge. With only a short scramble to go, Mike headed off for the top. Mark looked to him for a ride but Mike’s sunken eyes and stooped posture told him there was no way that he’d be able to lift Mark this time. Instead, their friend Ted was there, the one who’d carried Mark up the slopes to the base of the climb. He walked over and lifted Mark onto his back like a giant and the trio walked to the summit. Cheers split the air as they crested into view of the crowd gathered to greet them. Someone cracked champagne and handed it to Mark who shook it up and sprayed his friends who smiled and laughed and reveled in his and Mike’s accomplishment. Mark and Mike looked at each other, their beards wild, their bones showing through their clothes and wondered if they had just defeated Half Dome or if it was the other way round.
They had, for the second time, made climbing history on another big wall, knocking down barriers for para-athletes everywhere. In the years after, Mike would continue to climb in the park, later going on to found the Yosemite Climbing Museum with his friend, Ken Yager. He passed away in his home in 2022 at 68 years old, having climbed El Cap a total of 56 times! Mark followed his heart to skiing and went on to participate in races on the US Disabled Skit Team at the Paralympics to compete against other advanced sit-skiers. He mentions at the end of the book something that I think is a really valuable lesson to take away, which is that we’re all disabled, by which he means disadvantaged, in some way. One for me, for sure, is my eyesight because I wouldn’t be able to see anything but colorful blobs without my glasses. Climbing would be literally touch and go if I didn’t have them. I’m also shorter than a lot of the people I climb with. I think I’m exactly 5’ 6” and ¾ (or about 1.7 m) which is pretty tall generally but it becomes a disadvantage quite often around climbers who are taller with longer wingspans, which means I have to try different beta, choosing wiser foot placements which in the end has made me a better climber on technical crimpy moves on slab. But I can reverse that and say a lot of those same taller climbers are disadvantaged by their height because they often can’t do the smaller box moves, or get the depth out of crimps that my smaller fingers can. So, we all have abilities that can be taken as a disadvantage or as advantages when seen in a different light. For Mark, he’s obviously got a lot of barriers in the people world where things like stairs are built for one purpose and serve people in one way, but on the rock, he used his incredibly strong arms to power up the wall in a way I definitely wouldn’t be able to do, I’ve been working on training pull-ups for months and I still can’t get myself over the bar without aid, and apparently Mike Corbett couldn’t do more than a few pull ups either. I really like thinking about climbing this way because it’s things like trying different beta and watching people with totally different body types climb that proves the natural world, the rocks we get on, weren’t built by someone to be climbed and it’s only through the ways in which we choose to move over them that they can be topped. Watching adaptive climbers makes me realize that there is less of an obstacle for them in mobility, it’s an obstacle in the mind of able-bodied people. It’s the same challenge everyone faces on the wall and the same question that makes all of us want to try: can I climb this?
So that’s Mark’s incredible story of how he managed to summit two mountains without use of his legs, which is just, even with the story, just such a wild sentence to say. He’s my new climbing hero! And now I’m super inspired to try some big wall climbs later this year. I got this story from Mark’s book, Climbing Back, and I also watched two of Eric Perlman’s movies featuring Mark, Breaking Barriers and Beyond the Barriers (super confusing how similar the titles are). Both are still available on the ancient-looking website No Limits Tahoe, sorry Mark, which is the website for his business where you can find more info about his further adventures and see his climbing gear. I’ll share a few clips of his climbing on Instagram because, I mean, how could you not want to see this? Mark’s made some really incredible climbing gear as well, based off his original El Cap rig, and it’s actually been installed in climbing gyms which I think is really cool and so nice because I sometimes find myself thinking about the idea of bringing a disabled friend to a climbing gym and wondering how they’d approach the wall or if they’d be able to without aid. And that’s one of those things where I think of my sister, not because she’s major disabled, but because she’s left-handed, and so many of the problems at gyms have a right-handed advantage, so much so that when the climb is left-hand dominant I hear people grumbling about it around me on the mat. And that just goes back to what I said about the people world kind of building things for specific uses and creating disadvantages by limiting the uses of certain objects. I really hope some folks working at gyms out there are listening and are inspired to research modern adaptive climbing gear because it’s a sport that really doesn’t have any restrictions, it’s only the way that we teach it that can be restrictive and exclusive. But there are options out there for this gear that opens up these spaces to everyone and I’d love to see them used in person and try it out myself. I’d love to know what Mark’s pull-up bar system feels like!
Thanks for listening! I hope you’re feeling very inspired to climb from this story so get out there and climb today and, remember, always check your knots! Bye.
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Thanks for listening to Stick & Stone. You can follow along to find out about upcoming episodes at @stickandstonepod on Instagram. Support the show to get all episodes before the main feed on Patreon. If you want to watch the episodes, head to Stick and Stone Pod on YouTube. Follow the podcast wherever you listen, and leave a rating and review if you like the show. I hope you feel inspired to climb, and remember, always check your knots!
