National Geographic: Live From Yosemite's El Capitan: Photographer Captures Attempt at History-Making Climb

Climbing Dawn Wall

Photograph by Corey Rich

Tennis players have Wimbledon. Golfers have Augusta. But for rock climbers, the most important and sacred proving ground is El Capitan, the 3,000-foot granite monolith that commands center stage in California's Yosemite National Park.

For photographers, capturing the climbing action on El Cap is a tad more challenging than setting up a tripod and shooting courtside or at the 18th hole.

Photographer and filmmaker Corey Rich calls El Capitan his office. Currently, Rich is camped out on a portaledge with a pair of the world's top rock climbers who are trying to make history on the giant formation. Kevin Jorgeson, 30, and Tommy Caldwell, 36, are heading into their second week of vying to become the first people to "send" the Dawn Wall of El Capitan, which many in the climbing world claim as the longest, hardest free climb in the world. (Caldwell is a National Geographic 2015 Adventurer of the Year.)

For the attempt to qualify as a free climb, the men are attached to ropes for safety but use only their bodies to ascend.

Rich, 39, has spent countless nights tethered to El Cap's tall granite walls over the past two decades, sleeping in portaledges and documenting some of the most significant moments in climbing with his camera.

From El Cap Meadow, down on the valley floor, you can barely see the group of tiny figures moving incrementally up the 3,000-foot overhanging shield of granite. What they are doing, from this vantage, looks no different than any of the other hundreds of ascents El Cap receives each year. Yet if Caldwell and Jorgeson complete their mission to free climb the Dawn Wall-that is, climbing each segment, or pitch, in succession, without falling-it will be one of the most impressive achievements in 21st-century sports.

We called Rich on the mountain to hear more about what it's like to punch the clock at 1,200 feet up the side of El Capitan.

You've been shooting El Cap rock-climbing for over two decades. What's changed?

At first, you'd come up here with rolls of film. You didn't have a cell phone. You took pictures and just hope you exposed correctly. Three days later when you got down off the wall, you'd develop your film and find out whether you screwed up or did a good job.

Today it's pretty remarkable that we are sitting up on these portaledges on the side of El Cap with 4G coverage and devices that allow us to capture imagery and communicate those pictures with the entire world instantaneously.

Everyone on the wall right now is wearing two hats. There are currently four of us: two camera guys [Brett Lowell is the other] and the two climbers. If you're a climber, you're focusing on climbing and helping with rigging. If you're a camera guy, you're shooting motion and stills. That's a really unique characteristic for storytelling in the climbing world today.

What is your approach to capturing stills and motion?

What's important to understand is that this isn't a photo shoot. This is photojournalistic-at least in many ways. There's no direction on our part. Brett and I are hanging on ropes for hours, waiting for either Tommy or Kevin to climb. And they only climb once or twice each day.

Brett and I know that we're probably not going to make the best pictures and video of our lives this week. For one, Tommy and Kevin are climbing at night due to the fact that temps during the day are too hot for climbing. They need good, cold conditions. For better or worse, that means climbing at dusk or at night. Even in January!

So, what are good conditions from a climbing perspective are actually bad conditions from a photography/video perspective. We're shooting in the last light of the day-in a shadow. We're shooting at night. We're pushing the limits of what modern cameras can even handle.

How long does it take for you to get into position?

We don't spend 200 days a year on granite, like Tommy and Kevin do. We're super slow. We're carrying heavy cameras. So Tommy and Kevin give us a two-hour warning before they're about to climb. Brett and I move up the ropes and try to get into position. It's a real web of color-coded ropes up here. You go up blue, get on black, swing over to green, get on the tan line, and then tension yourself off the white rope. It all takes a lot of time.

Are you thinking more about safety or getting the shot?

We've been joking that it's "safety fourth."

Climbing is first. Photography/video is second. Having a good time is third. And safety is fourth. [Laughs] But in all honesty, you're constantly double-checking your system. Beyond that, you still have a very limited number of places you can actually get to. Even if you thought that over there would be the best perspective, it's still impossible to reach unless there's an anchor. Or unless someone like Tommy, who is a Jedi at rigging ropes, can figure out a way to get you into position.

Climbers have always held the "bond of the rope" as sacred. Does that bond exist between photographers/filmmakers and the climbers that they are documenting too?

Yeah, there's a huge trust factor. It's something that Tommy and I have talked about over the years. You want to know that the people who are next to you know what they're doing, that they're committed, they're psyched, and they're safe. Then, on top of all those basic climbing fundamentals, you still have to be able to tell a story and make interesting pictures.

Any close calls?

Not on this trip, thankfully. But in 2005, I was shooting Tommy and his then wife Beth Rodden on El Cap during their free climb of the Nose. After shooting Tommy, I began rappelling down to the belay to join my friends when I just heard Tommy, in this very stern voice, say, "Corey, stop! What are you doing?" The way he said it just made me freeze.

I looked down and saw that I was 12 inches away from rappelling off the end of my rope and falling 2,000 feet straight to the ground! He totally saved my life that day.

The entire climbing world is watching, and rooting, for Tommy and Kevin. As a climber yourself, are you having a hard time staying focused on the task at hand?

Totally. Last night I was shooting video when Kevin was giving pitch 15 a burn. He got to the crux, and I was shooting wide. I was so captivated watching Kevin give this incredible performance that I just let him climb right out of the frame so his head was cropped out ... This isn't a football game. We're watching our buddies. We really want them to succeed. And just as climbers ourselves, we want them to succeed. So we have to snap out of it and pay attention.

What is your motivation to continue going up on El Cap?

If you saw me sitting here right now, I'm sitting on a granite ledge about the size of my ass, with my feet dangling off into space. I'm staring at Yosemite Valley below, and above me I can see the most insane section of free climbing I've ever seen. I love the idea that this is where I get to live and work.

But more important to me is that, in some small way, I hope I can help share this sport I love with people and motivate them to be outside and push themselves in whatever capacity that is. I think that's my role as a storyteller. To help expose people to these wild places, and encourage them to get out there and enjoy the outdoors at their own levels.

Truth is, there's nowhere else I'd rather be. I'm with my buddies, on El Cap, doing what I love to do. It's as good as it gets.

Check back in at National Geographic for continued reporting from the Dawn Wall. In the meantime, check out our interactive history of climbing in Yosemite.

—By Andrew Bisharat, photo gallery by Sadie Quarrier

Published January 6, 2015
Working in a Vertical Realm

Photograph by Brett Lowell/Big Up Productions

Capturing this sweeping perspective of Jorgeson climbing pitch 15, at 1,200 feet up El Cap, involved something of a small miracle of rigging work. Here, filmmaker and photographer Brett Lowell hangs from a 2,700-foot-long, 9-millimeter-thick rope that has been tensioned out by a crew on the ground to pull him away from the wall. Lowell's primary goal is to shoot video of the ascent for a documentary film.

Once Lowell and Rich get into position on their respective ropes, they find themselves committed to that perspective for upward of five hours at a time. Simply moving around in this ethereal vertical realm is time consuming. Their constant challenge: finding creative ways to capture a diverse body of imagery while hanging from one position.

Published January 6, 2015
Down Time Up High

Photograph by Corey Rich

There's a surprising amount of down time for the whole crew as they wait for good climbing conditions in the evening and at night. Simply climbing one of the Dawn Wall's 32 pitches takes an enormous toll on the body and the fingertip skin. The climbers spend all day resting in their portaledges, charging their electronics with solar panels, updating social media accounts, and tending to their ever-thinning fingertip skin. Here, Caldwell repositions his Goal Zero solar panels on the fly of his portaledge camp so they receive direct sunlight.

Published January 6, 2015
Dirtbag Gourmet

Photograph by Corey Rich

One of the challenges of living on a wall for days at a time is making food that tastes good on a tiny propane stove suspended by cables from the portaledge. One-pot meals are the name of the game. According to Caldwell, seen here cooking up some gruel, one of the benefits to climbing El Cap in the winter is that their storage containers of food stay fresh longer due to the fact they're basically "living in a big refrigerator."

Published January 6, 2015
Stuck in Space

Photograph by Corey Rich

If the historic attempt to free climb the Dawn Wall of El Capitan is successful, it will be the first ascent of what many consider to be the longest, hardest free climb in the world.

Published January 6, 2015
Dawn of a New Day

Photograph by Corey Rich

Caldwell soaks in the early morning light while checking to see how much his skin healed overnight. "It's the most chapping environment in the world up here," he said. "Windy. Cold. Super dry. We're grabbing razor blades. I wake up twice a night and reapply lotion to my hands." Note the loop of webbing around his waist to protect him in case he accidentally rolls out of his portaledge while sleeping at night. You can tell that Caldwell, with one foot hanging off the ledge, is pretty comfortable living on a wall.

Published January 6, 2015
Life by the Tips of Your Fingers

Photograph by Corey Rich

Jorgeson's fingers are curled over a ripple of granite no thicker than the width of a quarter. By curling the fingers of his left hand on top of this tiny granite edge, he's able to maximize the leverage, and purchase, he gets. In climber-speak, this technique is called "crimping." Thus far, all of the 12 or so free climbs on El Cap have typically followed vertical cracks and other weaknesses in the rock. The Dawn Wall is one of the first routes to really explore the climbing on the blank, sheer faces in between the cracks.

Published January 6, 2015
The Big and Small

Photographby Corey Rich

A couple of nights ago, Caldwell was getting antsy sitting around the portaledge. He headed up on a rope to scope out the tiny holds on his next pitch, and recommit to memory the demanding sequences he'd need to perform in order to successfully climb it. Remembering the "beta," as climbers call the exact sequence of maneuvers needed to move between the holds, is a painstaking process and extremely important as the climbing gets harder. After spending seven years working to free climb this 3,000-foot wall, it's no exaggeration to say that Caldwell and Jorgeson have memorized every inch of it.

Published January 6, 2015