This year marks the 150th anniversary of the successful ascent of the Matterhorn, the first climb to catch the public imagination. At the time, it was billed as the last great mountaineering problem, the “hardest climb in the world”. Since then, there have been many more “hardest climbs in the world”. The 3,000ft Dawn Wall on El Capitan, in California’s Yosemite, is the latest in a long line to attract the label. The climbing community tends to be sceptical, knowing full well such descriptions help to attract sponsorship. Many hard routes are completed each year on lonely rock faces and ice-coated slabs, far from public gaze and without sponsorship, unlike the Yosemite climbers. But this is a time to lay cynicism about commercialism aside and applaud the 19-day epic of Americans Kevin Jorgeson and Tommy Caldwell. Dawn Wall may or may not be the hardest climb in the world but the ascent advanced the boundaries of the possible. It is a beautiful, soaring line up one of the grandest pieces of rock in the world and the two did it justice, climbing in a pure style, free of mechanical aids, and with admirable displays of grit and endurance. More than anything else, in a world full of depressing news, the two temporarily lifted the spirits, their every move visible from the meadows below and relayed round the world. And for that we should be grateful.
