Wild moment caught on camera as a climber on the Native Son route up El Capitan in Yosemite National Park hooked onto to rock flake after pendulum swinging into position only to have it break off and crash 2000 feet to the valley floor.
From spring to fall climbers flock to El Capitan to test their skills on one of the most iconic faces in the world. The granite monolith is about 3,000 feet above the floor of Yosemite Valley. Alex Honnold gained international recognition back in June 2017 when he became the first person to free solo El Capitan in 3 hours and 56 (he remains the only climber to free solo El Cap).
The following video was taken Oliver Tippett on the final hard pitch known as The Golden Nipple. This difficult section required three pendulums swing to traverse where Oliver used lateral momentum to traverse across the face. In one such swing he hooked onto a rock flake that immediately dislodged and fell to the valley floor:
“One bigger swing in the middle of the pitch to a hook resulted in a large obvious hooking flake taking a large obvious 2000’ ride to the ground. “
Oliver Tippett Comments On Native Son Route:
A couple of days ago I finished soloing Native Son on El Cap. It’s a wild A4 route up the southeast face with some amazing climbing, which took me a week to complete.
It started with a 5.9 tree, before having to sway the worryingly thin top section into the wall to latch a jug and mantle it. The hardest pitch, The Coral Sea, was fairly low down and creatively climbed through waves of creaking flakes.
That was followed by The Wing, a ridiculously steep pitch on old fixed mank, and then a headwall above with a couple pitches on perhaps the coolest part of El Cap; The Golden Finger of Fate. This is a completely detached sliver of immaculate rock, terminating in a feral squeeze within the finger. It genuinely made me question how I’d bail off the steepest part of El Cap but eventually I inched my way up.
The final hard pitch, The Golden Nipple, had three separate pendulums on it, often swinging off crap gear to latch further crap gear. One bigger swing in the middle of the pitch to a hook resulted in a large obvious hooking flake taking a large obvious 2000’ ride to the ground. The next penji was off slings girth hitched through a hole broken through the bone china thin flake, though happily this one stayed on the wall.
An amazing route and an amazing experience for sure!