Leading the Great Roof

The next pitch was one of the most famous pitches, not to mention one of the most noticeable features, on the whole route: the Great Roof. In fact, because of its size and the dark shadow that it casts on the wall below it at any hour of the day, the Great Roof is one of the most noticeable features on all of El Cap. It was my lead. (We had agreed that I would get this lead since Aaron got to do the King Swing.)

To climb the Great Roof, the climber follows the extremely thin crack that starts from the inside of the right-facing corner at the base of the pitch, up to the corner where the roof meets the wall, then out to the far right edge of the roof. Aid climbing this requires little more than a bunch of small nuts and cams (and knowing how to aid horizontally under a roof like that... which is easy with Russian aiders.) Free climbing this requires essentially liebacking the thin crack: the lower part is “only” 5.11d; the part under the roof is supposedly a sandbagged 5.13. I say supposedly because, at the time that we climbed this route, only one person had ever done it on lead: Lynn Hill, in the early 1990's. Interestingly, about a month after we climbed this route, the amazing husband and wife duo of Tommy Caldwell and Beth Rodden repeated Hill's feat, becoming the second and third people to ever free climb this pitch on lead. Caldwell also became the second person to ever free climb this entire route, leading every pitch, and in doing so he cut Hill's time (just under 24 hours) in half.