Your window into the stories, history, and ongoing work to preserve Yosemite’s climbing legacy.

A Note from the Editor

The news this past weekend: Glacier Point Road and Mariposa Grove Road opened at 8 a.m. on May 10. Tioga Pass remains “closed for the season due to snow (usually reopens late May or June, conditions depending),” NPS says.

“Trails starting from Glacier Point Road are still snowy,” Yosemite National Park wrote on Facebook. “Hikers should be prepared for winter travel and carry a GPS plus a map-and-compass backup. The Four Mile Trail to Glacier Point is currently closed. We may have an update later this week. Mariposa Grove shuttle service will also began on Saturday, May 10.”

Four-Mile Trail is closed.
A short section of the Valley Loop Trail near The Ahwahnee is detoured for rockfall.
Half Dome cables: scheduled for installation on Friday, May 23, weather permitting.

See the linked map for current climbing-area closures.

In other news, Backpackers Campground will remain open for the season. “Yosemite Valley’s backpackers campground is open as scheduled for the season after the park walked back plans to close the campground indefinitely,” wrote Mary Beth “Mouse” Skylis on May 8 in Backpacker.

On May 9, Katie Jackson at The Trek added: “In a significant turn of events…the campground, a critical resource for John Muir and Pacific Crest Trail hikers, will operate as usual.”

On Facebook on May 7, longtime local Chris Falkenstein reported that the Merced watershed was at 62% of average and the Tuolumne at 55%.

“If you’re a waterfall lover, now is the time to go!” says Flying Dawn Marie (May 7). “Yosemite’s waterfalls are flowing strong and stunning right now… likely at peak flow for the year.”

Profile of the week: big-wall free climber Elliot Faber. Over the weekend, I bumped into Elliot between his burns on The Direct Line / Platinum Wall on El Cap. We discussed our love of Yosemite climbing and our late friend, Zach Parke. From 2013-to 2015, Faber and Rob Miller worked on the Platinum Wall (39 pitches, 5.13+), though Elliot wasn’t on the final send. Miller wrote in the American Alpine Journal:

“It begins just left of the Nose and continues up the steepening blankness, following a circuitous path of 22 technical slab pitches before accessing the upper half of the Muir, either by the PreMuir (recommended) or the Shaft. From where these two routes meet, it continues up the aesthetic upper Muir corner system to access wild and overhanging terrain on the right wall. Bolted pitches take you to the prow between the Muir and Nose, and the route finishes close to the original Muir.”

“I… envisioned a nearly independent route all the way up the wall.”

In a 2017 Outside piece, I wrote:

“[Roby] Rudolf freed every pitch. It was his first free climb of El Cap. ‘It’s Rob’s route; he could have free-climbed it with anyone. I was just there,’ Rudolf says modestly. Miller… did not free the route.”

“El Cap is center stage for big-wall free climbing,” Tommy Caldwell told me for that story. “But it’s an elite few that manage to pull off a first free ascent.”

Chris Van Leuven

Editor, Yosemite Climbing Association News Brief

YosemiteClimbing.Org

Yosemite Matters:

A Call to Congress to Protect Our National Treasure

Huge thanks to everyone who has signed our petition to protect Yosemite! We've exceeded 300 signatures, and your support is creating a real impact.

Together, we’re urging lawmakers to safeguard our national parks and ensure NPS Rangers have the resources necessary to preserve these iconic spaces. If you haven’t signed yet, it’s not too late! Join us in protecting Yosemite today.

SIGN THE PETITION!

*Elliot Faber high on El Capitan. Photo: Sasha DiGiulian*

Elliot Faber: Longtime Valley Climber Revisits a 39-Pitch Free-Climb

Faber’s quest to juggle work, wedding plans, and make another run at his mega El Cap project

On Saturday morning, a big truck crunched up my driveway and out stepped a face I hadn’t seen in fifteen years—my old friend and climbing partner Elliot Faber. I did a double-take, then walked out grinning. We only had a minute to catch up; he was on his way to link up with Sasha DiGiulian for a late-day session on The Platinum Wall on El Cap—the likely-unrepeated free route he helped bolt more than a decade ago.

Elliot’s plan is modest: spend “months, maybe years” trying to free the line. It’s 39 pitches, up to 5.13+, starting on glacier-polished slabs, then going vertical, and finally kicking back to overhanging near the top. I (the editor) also rapped in from above and was freaked out of my mind by the exposure, but stuck it out. Beautiful climbing, totally out of my league—but I was happy to show up for support.

We scheduled a longer phone call the next day. Elliot, now 35, told me that his first trip to Yosemite (as a climber) was at 18. He showed up mid-winter in jeans and a T-shirt; some concession workers took pity and handed him a black down jacket from the “free bins.” He still wears that duct-taped puffy today, and his friends think it’s so cool, despite it being a ratty mess, that they want him to give it to them. We laughed about our mutual friend Mark Seelos, who once convinced a tourist that climbers “shoot ropes out of a rope-gun” to get them up El Cap. The guy walked off triumphantly, telling his wife, “See, I told you!”

Elliot still lives in Santa Cruz, trains at Pacific Edge, and swims to stay fit and keep his shoulders injury-free. Faber played collegiate water polo, and his dad, 6’6” and 71, still plays goalie in masters water polo. Off the wall, Elliot runs Santa Cruz Sustainable Sawmill and is planning his wedding and hopes to start a family someday.

About the Platinum Wall, he said of the climbing he did over the weekend, “We were about six pitches up… the sun went away and we could see the tiny ticked holds really well. It was awesome.”

He also shared that his Yosemite game isn’t razor-sharp right now. “I’m always amazed when people fly in and crush Yosemite their first week—it’s such a unique style.” Time is the crux: “Climbing the biggest things takes time—I’m running a business and planning a wedding… I’m kinda all-or-nothing: either climbing really hard or not at all.” He’s psyched to keep working on it but isn’t ready for the send yet.

Whether he frees it this fall or next year, he wants the route to see traffic. Tommy Caldwell told him it’s high on his list. “I’d rather see the route get climbed than say, ‘We bolted it only for ourselves,’ he says of equipping it a decade ago with Rob “Platinum” Miller.

“When people find out how good the climbing is up there, it’s going to blow up.”