Alex Honnold Loses Yosemite Speed Record

Nick Ehman has soloed The Nose in 4 hours and 39 minutes, breaking Alex Honnold’s solo record of 5 hours and 50 minutes. Tom Evans of the El Cap Report broke the news on Facebook, saying that Ehman’s ascent was “NOT a free-solo but with mixed free and aid climbing. Same as Alex did on his solo of The Nose.”

Climbers use a variety of techniques to solo a route like The Nose, from rope-soloing to free-soloing to “Metroviching” – a term coined after speed-soloist Russ Mitrovich where a climber uses daisy chains to stay clipped to at least two pieces at all times.

Soloing The Nose in a day – known as NIAD – is rarely done, but many climbers have accomplished the feat over the past few decades. The first rope-solo NIAD was in 1989 by Steve “Shipoopi” Schneider in 21 hours 22 minutes. In 1999, Dean Potter lowered the fastest solo time up NIAD to 12 hours and 59 minutes. Hans Florine took back the solo NIAD record with a time of 11 hours and 41 minutes. In 2012, Honnold became the first climber to solo Yosemite’s “triple” in a day, which includes the Northwest Face of Half Dome, The Nose on El Capitan and the South Face of Mount Watkins, in 18 hours and 50 minutes.

In 2013, the late Marc-André Leclerc broke Honnold’s speed record up the Grand Wall in Squamish, lowering it from 59 minutes to 57. Honnold heard about it and returned to Squamish to take his record back, lowering the solo record up the Grand Wall (including the Roman Chimneys) to 38 minutes. Honnold said after, “[Leclerc] had broken a speed record I’d set… so I planned to retake a couple of things… But it’s not a huge deal or anything. I did it in 38 minutes. I went by myself and I was free-soloing the majority of it, but I didn’t technically free climb all of it… I just did everything I could to do it fast, basically.”

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