It took roughly four hours Saturday for rock climber Alex Honnold to make an ascent so dangerous no one has ever tried it before: scaling Yosemite’s El Capitan with no rope.
Some called it a suicide mission. El Capitan is 3,000 feet of vertical granite, jutting straight to the sky. Many of its cracks are so small, they fit only one finger.
“I mean, there are BASE-jumping stunts that require you to be ‘on’ for 20 seconds,” said Chris McNamara, a Lake Tahoe climber who spent many years diving and parachuting off giant rocks. “And then there’s … Pictures and More