Best guess on how many people have climbed El Cap?

I just stumbled onto a copy of Hans's book 'On The Nose'. It's a fun read. Anyway, it got me wondering how many people have actually climbed El Cap? I know it's impossible to say, but fun to ponder! 

What's your best guess on the total numbers in the following categories, not counting repeat ascents?

1) Number of people who have tried to climb El Cap.

2) Number of people who have actually summited El Cap.

3) Number of people who have solo summited El Cap.

4) Number of people who have free soloed El Cap - OH WAIT, PICK ME, PICK ME... I KNOW THIS ONE!

1) 90,000

2) 25,000

3) 3,000

4)1

Count me among population #1, making his yearly attempt to become part of #3

There are like 50,000 people in Tuolumne County. So at least that many.

Plenty of people have free solo'd elcap, just with a rope. 

Am I really high or do the last two responses not make any sense at all? (Or both?)

Fun question. 

I believe philip is implying that every single person in Tuolumne County has climbed the captain. And seb means that many of us have climbed the captain with a rope, but ALL pieces placed would not hold a fall, thus effectively constituting a free-solo-consequence-laden ascent. 

Personally I'd be even more interested in differentiating the frequency of climbers making 1, 2, 3, 4, ... all the way out to the proud few who have made dozens of El Cap ascents. I couldn't help myself so I got a spreadsheet involved in tackling this problem. Taking Sam's numbers for 1) and 2) as a basis, I made exponential and bilinear attrition models for how many climbers have made N = 1 --> 50 ascents.

With 90,000 lifetime failures (maybe "you did your best" participation award is nicer way to put it) and a sum total of 25,000 people who have made 1 or more ascents, each model looks like this:

The above charts (right one is the same, just zoomed in) indicate that, for the exponential model, almost 20k climbers have made 1 ascent, but only 4k climbers have made 2 ascents -- meaning that somewhere in the neighborhood of 16k haul bags were left permanently on the summit of the captain by teams vowing "never again". Meanwhile the linear model indicates that over 6k climbers have made 25 or more ascents! That doesn't seem realistic, and I would give more merit to the exponential decay model. However, noticing that the exponential model goes to zero climbers having made more than 7 ascents, such a model would imply that legends such as PTPP, Hudon, SS, and so forth are INCREDIBLY badass, defying the mathematical odds to become wall super gods. (haha)

...

Bumping that up to an equal number of 1) failures and 2) successful 1 or more ascents, each model looks like this:

You could look at all the same stuff but I'm tired of typing now despite too much afternoon coffee :o

...

P.S. Did this in Excel, which has a cool "Solver" feature on the Data tab. It allowed me to hit Sam's estimates for 90k fails and 25k total successes as an optimization problem. The main tweakable parameter was the decay rate for each model, a parameter I dubbed "rate of attrition, I'm done with walls, this is B.S." factor   

that guy named seb wrote:

Plenty of people have free solo'd elcap, just with a rope. 

Idk if your joking but I believe 6 people have free-rope-soloed El Cap. Maybe more? 5 via Free Rider (Pete Whittaker in a day!) and Keita Kurakami via the Nose!

that guy named seb wrote:

Plenty of people have free solo'd elcap, just with a rope. 

Corbett always counted the West face. That was a while back though. 

A lot.

Kevin Heinrich wrote:

Idk if your joking but I believe 6 people have free-rope-soloed El Cap. Maybe more? 5 via Free Rider (Pete Whittaker in a day!) and Keita Kurakami via the Nose!

There are undoubtedly more than 5 who have rope solo'd freerider free, just like there is well over a hundred people who have climbed 9a, you just don't hear about most of them. 

It's interesting to read the history and see that El Cap didn't get climbed a lot in the 60s. I think the third ascent of the Nose was only done in 68. Robbins kept a list of ascents for a long time and I believe Tom Evans was told that his ascent of the Nose was the 33rd. When we did it in 77, we were told that we had done the 25th ascent of the NA. I did the 3rd ascent of the Magic Mushroom in 77 and I'm sure that climb hasn't seen 30 ascents.

Certainly, 5 routes, Lurking Fear, The Salathe, Triple Direct, The Nose and Zodiac get 95% of all ascents currently. Nose ascents are probably over 10K.

Sam guesses that only 25K people have succeeded but that means only 12,500 ascents.

Let's say that there are 100 El Cap climbing "seasons" (spring and fall) since 1973 (arbitrary date for easy math). Using 12.5K ascents, that works out to 125 per season, 250 times a year. That seem like a legit number to me. 

It seems to me that in a 2 month "season" a party tops out the Nose every day. That would give you 60 ascents.

The number that interests me the most would be the answer to 3) - how many people have soloed El Cap?  And how many of those few people were stupid enough to go do it again? And again?  

However, noticing that the exponential model goes to zero climbers having made more than 7 ascents, such a model would imply that legends such as PTPP, Hudon, SS, and so forth are INCREDIBLY badass, defying the mathematical odds to become wall super gods.

Oh, go on with you ..... GO ON WITH YOU, I say!  Hoping to get up my 66th DIFFERENT El Cap route this fall with the abovementioned SS. "Decrepit old farts send!"  

Sixty six ?!!!! Yer an inspiration, sir. The maths confirm it !!!

As for the soloing -- that could be a thread in and of itself, I think.... the motivations and so on. Just .... why ... lol

I've thought about it but can't get my head around to truly wanting to do it!

To me he’ll always be 

“that guy that watched me Haul the bags all the way to Mammoth” 

Oh that does it you two !

I'm gonna solo El Cap for the holiest motivation of them all ........ pure spite !!!

Just being too stupid to quit has worked well for me. 

@Pete - we're all stupid to be climbing these walls in the first place, so I guess it's not a huge leap to be too stupid to quit!  

My formula to success:

cost to quit > desire to quit = summit

I live out of the country, so it's incredibly expensive to fly in, rent a car, and spend 3 weeks climbing a wall. The real expenditure, however, comes is the relationship capital spent with the wife in order to leave the family to do what she considers a completely idiotic pursuit of suffering for no apparent reason. To offset my Yosemite trip this fall it will cost me an all expense paid trip to Los Angeles complete with AirBB and tickets to Magic Mountain for mother and daughter. Let's just say my mentality on summiting will be 'failure is not an option'! 

Motivation is a funny thing.