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Warren Harding, George Whitmore, and Wayne Merry are lashed to a hanging stance, 3000 feet up El Capitan. It's November. The days are cold and short, and afternoon shadows already streak up the wall beneath them. They gaze overhead, and despair: will they ever get off? Will it ever be over?
On this, their final push, the trio has been on the wall 11 days, twice as long as any American has ever spent on a rock climb. Below a pitched battle, every lead sieged. They've met obstacles no rock climber has ever seen, let alone mastered--wild pendulums, nailing expanding flakes, and the back-breaking task of hauling vast supplies up the cliff side. And now, only a 50-foot headwall bars them from the summit of the mightiest rock wall in the contiguous United States. But that headwall, that last 50 feet, is dead blank and overhanging. They'll have to retreat 350 feet to Camp 6 and a good ledge, and tackle the headwall in the morning.
There comes a point in every great climber's career when technique, or fitness, or even genius falls short, that moment when success depends on brute willpower. And just then, Warren Harding was marshaling his. Never mind the swollen hands, the mangled gear and frayed ropes; ignore the rats that gnawed through haul bags, the rain and sleet and chilling retreats or the running feud with rangers; and forget the private terrors and all the sleepless nights because finally, hanging in a web of tattered slings, Harding can nearly spit to the top. Light? He don't need no stinking light!
So Harding starts bolting. And in an epic no climber should ever forget, he hammers through the night, finally punches home the 28th and last bolt, and stumbles to the top just as dawn spills into the valley. The first ascent of The Nose, one of the greatest pure rock climbs in the world, is done. It is November 12, 1958.
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