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 let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“No two men see the world exactly alike, and different temperaments will apply in different ways a principle that they both acknowledge. The same man will, indeed, often see and judge the same things differently on different occasions: early convictions must give way to more mature ones. Nevertheless, may not the opinions that a man holds and expresses withstand all trials, if he only remains true to himself and others?”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“Thanks to the morning light,
Thanks to the foaming sea,
To the uplands of New Hampshire,
To the green-haired forest free.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more.”
—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)