Brian and his friend, Nick, were climbing El Cap when the rock slide happened. Interestingly enough the park geologist, needed to survey the situation, was on a route very close to theirs. Here’s what Brian had to say and his video from Flickr as the SAR helicopter came to extract the park geologist.
Brianz: At this stage we had *very* little water between us. In fact, we had run out and it was hot. I’ve never been so dehydrated in my life. The only thing that was a relief was that we were near the top and I knew there was going to be some sort of water stashed up there.
The helicopter is an interesting story. It turns out there was a rock slide over on Glacier Point above Curry Village. The park geologist happened to be climbing a route next to us called Mescalito. The park needed him to get his ass to work, so they dropped off six search and rescue folks at the top of El Cap along with a crap load of gear. They lowered one SAR guy down to the geologist and got him down to the ground.
Another interesting thing happened during Nick and Brian’s climb of El Cap. Hans and Yuji, who just set another speed climbing record for the Nose passed them and Brian got pictures and video.
Here’s Brian’s video of Yuji passing them on the way up. He was flying up this 10d rated section.
Very cool stuff.
Photo and videos by Brian Zambrano via Flickr.