By Ken Trout From: Golden, CO Oct 12, 2007
| After three months of Valley training in 1975, we couldn't get past this dreadful roof using only stoppers and hexes. Not much later, I had the audacity to ask STEVE WUNSCH if it was true that he had freed it. I just had to hear it from him, because it seemed so impossible. He said it was not something he'd want to do again. It was done on Perlon threaded stoppers and hexes! (1972 was the year he did the uppper Prayer Book and New Dimensions, considered to be Yosemite's first 5.11) I once contacted Dr. McCarty (authored High Over Boulder with Pat Ament) with the question of who did the first ascent of the dihedral. I'm missing my notes, but the main FIRST ASCENSIONISTS for the wall are Tom Fender and Larry Dalke, late sixties. Jeff Achy's book, Climb, covers it. |