El Capitan: Historic Feats and Radical Routes [Hardcover]

Daniel Duane (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 2000

An unforgettable faceall 3,000 granite feet of it. El Capitan towers above California's Yosemite Valley, a sheer rock wall, seemingly insurmountable, and by far the most coveted rock climb on earth. El Capitan traces the mountain's unique history and recounts the vertical adventures had therefrom Warren Harding's 45-day siege in 1958 up through the recent speed climbs of under 5 hours. Critically acclaimed author Daniel Duane articulates how this massive wall can totally consume a person. Duane profiles the legends who have devoted themselves to El Capitan, including Royal Robbins, Warren Harding, and John Middendorf. Accompanied by 36 moody duotones, El Capitan captures the essence of big wall climbing.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Like a younger, funnier Peter Matthiessen, Duane brought an easily worn literary and environmental seriousness to his beautiful 1996 book on surfing, Caught Inside: A Surfer!s Year on the California Coast and followed with a surprisingly entertaining novel about rock climbers, Looking for Mo. In his new book, Duane is again a knowledgeable but scrupulously unheroic participant narrator, conveying the wonder and self-torture of his subject without lapsing into glorifying clichE. El Capitan basically draws on the research that went into Duane!s climbing novel, re-creating the stirring ascents of the great 3000' granite chunk in Yosemite Valley known as El Cap, which is pictured throughout in dizzying photos. No one conquered the Cap until the late 1950s, but Duane shows the evolution since of the rock!s fabled routes"the Salathe, Pacific Ocean Wall, the Nose"and the change in emphasis from who will be first to whose ascent will be fastest or purest. Duane skillfully contrasts the spiritual fathers of modern rock climbing, from Warren Harding (whose 1958 effort wasn!t the prettiest or shortest on record but was first) to the more aesthetic-minded climbers Royal Robbins and Yvon Chuinard, up until the recent free climb attempts of Scott Burk. Recommended for sports and outdoor collections."Nathan Ward, Library Journal
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

From a San Francisco climber and journalist comes this interesting history of one of the world's most challenging rocks: El Capitan, nestled in California's Yosemite Valley, a sheer granite wall 3,000 feet high that has captured the imaginations of mountaineers since its discovery in 1851. One man climbed El Cap 52 times in 12 years. In 1958, Warren Harding spent 45 days on the rock; nowadays really hardy mountaineers can get from bottom to top in about five hours. Duane, who has spent some time on El Cap himself (in 1991, he made three unsuccessful attempts to get to the top), tells the rock's story by introducing us to the men who dedicated their lives to conquering it. This is a dramatic book, full of derring-do, near misses, and thrills and chills, ideal for readers of real-life adventures (like The Perfect Storm or Into Thin Air) and armchair mountaineers. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 144 pages
• Publisher: Chronicle Books; First Edition edition (September 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811824845
• ISBN-13: 978-0811824842
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,265,750 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, but somehow insufficient, September 22, 2000

By 

K. Freeman (Apple Valley, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: El Capitan: Historic Feats and Radical Routes (Hardcover)

This book deserves 4 stars rather than 5 not for what's in it, but for what isn't. This is really a musing, a meditation on El Cap, not the definitive history which it purports to be. Duane examines the Big Stone through the experiences of some of its ascentionists: Harding, Robbins, Corbett, Middendorf, Burke, and so on. But others are strangely absent. Where is Piana and Skinner's controversial Salathe Wall first free ascent? What about the Wings of Steel incident? Where, for heaven's sake, is Lynn Hill? Duane is perhaps at his best when he interviews climbers, drawing intense, personal statements from them. Perhaps his tone is a little depressing, a little inclined to see climbing as pointless, but this is still a worthwhile, intelligently written book. For me, though, Duane's reductionist approach is, ultimately, not enough.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A gem, October 6, 2000

By 

S. Roper (Oakland, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: El Capitan: Historic Feats and Radical Routes (Hardcover)

This is truly a splendid book, capturing personalities of Valley climbers better than anything I've read. Beautifully written, thoughtful, insightful. Great pics also. But Duane is sometimes a sloppy researcher. Misspelled names galore (Scott Burk throughout, e.g.) Wrong dates. Wrong first-ascent names. Screwed-up captions. Bad geography (Palms Springs lies under the Tehachipi Mountains?). These are minor flaws but irritating to see in such a brilliant writer.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Close But No Cigar, October 17, 2000

By 

"steelmonkey" - See all my reviews

This review is from: El Capitan: Historic Feats and Radical Routes (Hardcover)

I was excited to see a new history book on El Capitan, but the final product was short of my expectations. Duane draws a few good observations and insight at times, but the guts of the book strike me as a rehash of articles from all kinds of other publications. I have an unusually large collection of climbing literature, which may skew my observations because I've seen so much of the raw historical material he draws from for the book in so many other places. I don't mind that so much, but I was hoping to hear some of the not-so-well known stories of adventures on El Cap and a little more new insight into the historical figures of the big stone. It just wasn't there for me. People who are not so read up on climbing history will probably find the book more enjoyable. The book is an incredibly quick read (not that much text, but lots of pictures) for a subject that could easily justify a much larger book.