T
HE ONE-DAY ASCENT OF THE NOSE in
1975 by Jim Bridwell, John Long, and Billy Westbay dazzled the climbing world. Their time on the wall—a shade under fifteen hours—shaved an astounding twenty hours off the previous record, set just the year before. It was inevitable that someone would show up and climb the Nose even faster than the trio of legendary Stonemasters. In 1979, a French ace, Thierry Renault, came to the Valley and surged up the route in under thirteen hours. His ascent was notable in view of the fact that most European climbers get shut down cold on their first visits to Yosemite, either because they’re unused to severe crack climbing or because they’re simply intimidated by the sheer, sweeping granite walls. Renault made so little fuss about his deed that the name of his climbing partner seems lost to history (the compendia of speed climbs simply cite “Thierry ‘Turbo’ Renault + other”). Five more years passed before Renault’s time was bettered. Again, the new record was claimed by climbers from abroad. On the summer solstice in 1984, the Brit Duncan Critchley and the Swiss Romain Vogler pulled off the ascent in the remarkable time of nine and a half hours. Then along came Hans Florine. An All-American pole vaulter in college, Florine started climbing in his native California at the age of nineteen and almost at once realized that his forte was speed. Early on, he won virtually every speed competition on artificial walls that he entered, including three gold medals in the X Games. It as logical that Florine would turn his attention to the Nose. In 1990, at the age of twenty-five, Hans paired up with Steve Schneider to lop nearly an hour and a half off the Critchley-Vogler record. Their time on El Cap, from base to summit, was eight hours and six minutes. But the new record didn’t last long, as Peter Croft and Dave Schultz cut the mark to 6:40. As mentioned in previous chapters, Peter Croft was one of the climbers a young Alex Honnold most admired, because of the bar he set with his solo climbs. Alex’s free solos of Astroman and the Rostrum in a single day in 2007 gained him his first fame in the Valley, since no one had dared to try to repeat Croft’s blazing feat during the previous twenty years. Six years older than Florine, Croft as a creaky thirty-two when he set the new record on the Nose. With that, the race was on. Times were now clocked to the minute, not the more casual “slightly under X number of hours.” Unlike most of his peers, who tend to minimize the role that competitiveness plays in their lives, Florine has always unabashedly confessed to relishing head-tohead combat. In 1991, with Andres Puhvel, Florine took back the crown with a time of 6:01—only to have Croft return with Schultz and reduce the record to a mind-boggling 4:48. It was always, however, a friendly competition, so it was apropos that the two masters paired up and went for an even faster time. In 1992, Florine and Croft set the mark at 4:22. That record stood for the next nine years. Perhaps no one in the Valley could imagine improving on such a stellar performance, or perhaps the speed record simply fell out of vogue. It was not until Dean
