No strings attached: Two men attempt world’s most difficult climb at Yosemite

Two men are roughly halfway through what has been called the hardest rock climb in the world: a free climb of a half-mile section of exposed granite in California’s Yosemite National Park. Tom Evans, a climber and photographer, has been chronicling Kevin Jorgeson. 30, of Santa Rosa, California, and Tommy Caldwell, 36, of Estes Park, Colorado, as they scale their way using only their hands and feet. El Capitan, the largest monolith of granite in the world, rises more than 3,000 feet above the Yosemite Valley floor. The men eat, stretch and sleep in hanging tents suspended to El Capitan’s Dawn Wall. They have kept in touch with the outside world thanks to social media—Twitter, Facebook, feeding information for blogs and keeping in touch with a bevy of supporters on the ground.

The guys are doing great. (Monday) they are resting and trying to grow skin back on their fingertips so they can continue to do battle with the hardest climbing sections, which involve grabbing tiny, razor-sharp edges of rock.

Josh Lowell with Big Up Productions, which has been chronicling their climbs for the last six years

The climb is divided into 32 sections. Many have climbed Dawn Wall but the pair would be the first to “free climb” the section using ropes only as a safeguard against falls. The first climber reached El Capitan’s summit in 1958, and there are roughly 100 routes up to the top. Tom Evans said the two have a cellphone on their ascent, but they weren’t taking calls Monday because they were resting and “want no distractions while on the cliff.” But both update their Facebook pages regularly and tweet from the Dawn Wall, which has been called “as smooth as alabaster, as steep as the bedroom wall.”

Being up on the wall for over a week and the hard climbing Tommy and Kevin have done up until now adds an element of difficulty on top of the hard climbing they have to do.

Tommy Caldwell’s wife Becca

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