For decades, rock climbers in Yosemite National Park have set new standards by asking themselves a simple question: How much can you accomplish in 24 hours?
This “game,” as some climbers call it, is what inspired legendary crushers like Dean Potter and Alex Honnold to climb the park’s three biggest walls, known as the Yosemite Triple Crown, as fast as possible.
Now, two relatively unknown climbers — Tanner Wanish, 34, and Michael Vaill, 32 — have taken the bar set by their predecessors and pushed it a little higher. Earlier this month, they shaved a half hour off the Yosemite Triple Crown record, practically swimming up El Capitan, Mount Watkins, and Half Dome in just under 18 hours.
That would be impressive enough. But the duo were still chasing elite climbing feats in Yosemite Valley.
This week, they announced themselves the “Valley Quadfathers” for pulling off four big walls in a single day. Wanish and Vaill added a 1,200-foot Yosemite face called the Washington Column to the Triple Crown and still managed to summit all four walls in 21 hours and 50 minutes.
Put the four walls together, and that’s over 8,000 feet of vertical climbing.
Finding the Right Partner
Many climbers would consider ascending just one of Yosemite National Park’s big walls a lifetime achievement. It requires mastery of many different technical skills, incredible endurance, and meticulous planning.
So, it’s no small thing that Wanish and Vaill met just 3 years ago during their first attempt to climb El Capitan. They met through climbing wiki Mountain Project and quickly established a bond that would take them higher than ever before. In a tribute to their partnership posted on Instagram last week, Wanish noted that “climbing is inherently a team sport” that often requires “the right partner” for the biggest objectives.
“With the right partner, it’s really incredible what you can try to get done,” he wrote.
“We were both used to being the one always down for one more pitch in partnerships, so without a voice of reason to say no, we quickly started to rack up some big days in the following seasons,” he wrote. “Since then, almost every one of my proudest days on rock has been with Mike and it’s been incredible to grow both individually as climbers and as a team together toward something bigger.”
The Yosemite Triple Crown became one of rock climbing’s most respected records back in 2001, when Dean Potter and Timmy O’Neill first managed to scale all three mountains in less than 24 hours. Only eight other parties have managed the feat since then.
Of those, only Alex Honnold and Tommy Caldwell have free-climbed the Triple Crown (meaning they only used gear for protection, not for upward movement). Jim Reynolds and the late Brad Gobright set the previous speed record for the Triple Crown in 2018.
As for Wanish and Vaill’s four-wall accolade, only time will tell if other climbers decide that climbing four walls in a day is better than three. But even if someone comes along and climbs the mountain fasters, Wanish and Vaill will always be the originators of the Yosemite Quadruple Crown.
