On November 20, Yosemite climbing guide Lance Colley redpointed Gaia, a seven-pitch 5.12c he and former Yosemite climbing ranger Brandon Adams established between July and October 2023. Adams redpointed the line in October and Colley redpointed it a month later.

“The entire experience, from visualizing to sending, is epic, and I’m grateful. I’m hoping all my monkey friends will try it,” Colley added, saying that the crux pitch was his hardest lead to date.

His comment – climbing the hardest terrain he’s ever done while establishing a first ascent – is exactly what Adams told me in 2019 when he established the 1,300-foot Yosemite 5.12c Wayward Son on Lost Brother.

“There’s one pitch that’s runout for sure. Brandon led it with almost no pro, so it was hard to justify any more bolts,” Colley says while munching on a strawberry. “The route was super clean, and we mostly just pulled off dangerously loose blocks. We only used a brush a little bit.”

Gaia breaks down into:
• Pitch One: 5.11c, 120 feet.
• Pitch Two: 5.10a 150 feet.
• Pitch Three: 5.10a, 50 feet.
• Pitch Four: 5.12c/d, 80 feet.
• Pitch Five: 5.11b, 130 feet.
• Pitch Six: 5.11d, 120 feet.
• Pitch Seven: 5.10d, 130 feet.

The 800-foot route is located on the east side of Middle Cathedral’s North Apron. It lies west of the 2,000-foot North Buttress and hugs a weaving line east of the heady, technical slabs found on the North Face Apron. It’s near the North Face route, an obscure line found in the old Yosemite “Green” guidebook.

“The climbing is inspiring and beautiful,” wrote Adams on Mountain Project. “The cruxes are well protected. All hardware is 3/8 and bomber. Permashade in spring and fall, morning shade in summer.”

The glacier-polished granite on the route is orange, yellow, black, and gray. Behind the route is El Capitan. The route has multiple PG sections – areas where you’re a ways above your pro but not dangerously runout.

Brandon Adams

First ascents in Yosemite are nothing new to Adams. In 2018 he spent 10 days on El Cap with partner Kristopher Wickstrom to establish 3,000-foot Ephemeron, a hard-aid route (5.10 A4) that parallels the Nose. The route weaves in and out of existing lines via “delicate but not death-defying A4 climbing,” he told me for a story in Climbing. “While establishing Ephemeron, Adams took two 50-foot falls. “One fall was because a feature I was hooking broke off. The other was a small beak that came out,” he said. “There are areas where you are risking a longer fall.”

In 2021, Adams and Wickstrom put up their second El Cap first ascent, Neptune, 5.10 A4, on the southeast face. “The line follows the thinnest of cracks on the climber’s left of Space, with micro-beak seams that ascend a massive roof near the Pacific Ocean Wall. The new route intersects Tempest, Pacific Ocean Wall, Dawn Direct, and Every Man for Himself,” I reported in Climbing.

Previously, in 2019, after two years of work on the 1,300-foot Wayward Son on Lost Brother, where “I thought I had a 10-percent chance to do it free,” he said, Adams finally redpointed the 5.12c pitch. The route has four 5.12 and five 5.11 pitches.

Adams, who resides in Bishop, spent six years living and working in Yosemite, where his specialty was speed-climbing El Capitan. He halved the Iron Hawk record, doing it in 15:37; he also shaved 10 hours off Mescalito (near the Dawn Wall), doing the route in 13:46. He holds a huge number of speed records on El Cap, as seen here.

His duties as a climbing ranger included: “stewardship, interpretive programs including Climber Coffee, trail maintenance, climbing patrols, and special projects,” he says.

From Santa Cruz, California, his introduction to climbing came post-college after his time at Lewis and Clark in Portland, Oregon. His initial forays into technical ascents took him up the volcanic landscapes of the Pacific Northwest.

Adams has climbed El Cap 54 times via 33 different routes. Watch Adams break the Muir Wall speed record in this film by Max Buschini.

Lance Colley

Known as Pink Pants Lance on Instagram, well, because he climbs in pink pants, Colley resides just west of Yosemite and works for the Yosemite Mountain School. He’s a former Yosemite campground ranger and former Yosemite Search and Rescue member. He began climbing with his dad in Seattle when he was 13. At 14 he climbed Mt. Rainier and picked up rock climbing after that.

In 2021, he and Adams set the speed record for Aurora on El Cap, ticking the route in 13:02. With other partners, he’s set the records on Squeeze Play, Sunkist, and Aquairan Wall. “He’d climbed over 10,000 vertical feet in the seven days culminating with Sunkist,” I reported in Climbing. On the route, while partnered with Tyler Karow, he took a massive whipper and broke his back.

“Colley took a 45-footer,” Karow told me in that story. “He was a move away from the security of a machine-head rivet (like a mini bolt) when a fixed copperhead blew, sending him down the wall like an elevator from pitch 25. Three beaks blew, the fourth unclipped from the rope, and Colley blazed past the anchor.”

Writes Megan Wimberley on Friends of Yosemite Search and Rescue, “Believing he had only a strained back, Colley continued going out on SARs and participated in 3 carry-outs before later being diagnosed with a broken back. Colley’s recovery activities have included hiking and cycling. His recovery has gone well, and he is back to climbing.”

Colley has completed more than 30 ascents of El Cap and holds four speed records.

Present Day: Talking with Colley

I invited Colley over for cool snacks on an overcast April day in the Sierra foothills, where we talked about Gaia and what was next for him and Adams.

Chris Van Leuven: Hope you’re enjoying the strawberries and Send Bars. Awesome work sending the crux, “The White Tiger,” pitch 4, 5.12c. What was it like?

Colley: That one was such a battle for me. It just felt good to get it done. It came down to one move that I kept falling on. Brandon is a bit taller so he could reach the next hold better than I can. It’s very techy, big movement and delicate moves. At the end you get your feet really high on a vertical slab and launch for a hidden hold.

CVL: I see one more named section on the topo, “Red Fox Corner,” 5.11d, pitch 6. Was that one wild? Looks long, techy trad, with a thin face section.

Colley: Early on we thought we’d call the route Gaia to go along with Father Time and Mother Earth. Gaia is the ancestorial mother. That pitch is a beautiful, long corner. It’s a glory 5.9 handcrack and there’s a boulder problem, the 5.11d, to get into it.

GVL: What’s next for you and Brandon?

We’d like to take this route all the way to the top. We have nine days set aside in mid-May for that. Who knows what it will be like. There could be some blank sections up high; we’ll see if they go when we get up there. We want to go all the way to the top of the mountain instead of stopping at the Catwalk.