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 of, wall, early, morning and/or light:
“Most of the time she had the personality of the back wall of a handball court.”
—Alexander Theroux (b. 1940)
“Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but is also their means of communication. It is the same with us and God. Every separation is a link.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)
“Mormon colonization south of this point in early times was characterized as “going over the Rim,” and in colloquial usage the same phrase came to connote violent death.”
—State of Utah, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Human life is like morning dew.”
—Chinese proverb.
“But thou beneath the sad and heavy line
Of death, doth waste all senseless, cold, and dark;
Where not so much as dreams of light may shine,
Nor any thought of greenness, leaf, or bark.”
—Henry Vaughan (1622–1695)