Wall of Early Morning Light
In 1971, Robbins completed the second ascent, with Don Lauria, of the Wall of Early Morning Light on El Capitan, with the (controversial) intention of erasing the route as they climbed it.
Their ascent closely followed the 1970 first ascent by Warren Harding and Dean Caldwell, completed with a heavy-handed reliance on bolts - a method that offended Robbins and other clean climbing advocates. Harding had left all his bolts in the rock; Robbins and Lauria used the bolts to repeat the climb; and Robbins then chopped the heads off the bolts behind them. After two pitches, Robbins stopped chopping the bolts because (according to Lauria) "the quality of the aid climbing was much higher than he had ever expected of Harding or Caldwell and, of course, it was also taking us an awful long time to chop all those goddam bolts."
Read more about this topic: Royal Robbins
Famous quotes containing the words wall, early, morning and/or light:
“I discovered
the colors in the wall that woke
when spray from the hose
played on its pocks and warts....”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man’s abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Ye are the light of the world.”
—Bible: New Testament Jesus, in Matthew, 5:14.
From the Sermon on the Mount.