To the grindstone, Scott Burk makes second
free ascent of The Nose

"I mutated my body for this route," says
Scott Burk of El Cap's The Nose, the most
compelling line in Yosemite. Burk, 35, from
Berkeley, California, has not ventured onto
another route since January 1996.
But he has put in his time on The Nose:
261 days to be precise. Almost
certainly the longest time any person has
ever spent on one route. If Burk didn't
have the ability to make all the moves the
day he began, he sure does now.

His ascent came after a lot more work than
Lynn Hill's of September 1993 (Hill took
about eight days in all). But, says Burk,
who had great praise for Hill, "This is not
about comparing myself. The Nose is one of
the ultimate challenges in American free
climbing, one of the most beautiful routes
in the world." Even after all his
preparation, not everything went right for
Burk, who, supported by Eric Holm, Boulos
Ayad, and Nick Ginn, began his successful
attempt last November on the inauspicious
date of Friday
the 13th.

Over the 12 days it took for the
ground-to-summit free ascent, conditions
were terrible. About a fifth of the route
(700 feet of climbing) was dripping wet. At
The Great Roof, one of the wettest pitches,
Burk, exhausted, but with no time for an
overnight rest, made do with a toprope
ascent after his father (watching from the
meadow below) alerted him by cell phone to
a large impending storm.

Much talk has surrounded The Nose since
Hill's historic first free ascent, and her
subsequent one-day free ascent. Many strong
climbers have been shut down by the two
hardest pitches. Some people have even
suggested that it was only because of
Hill's small fingers that she and no others
had succeeded on the Great Roof pitch, an
arching pin-scarred crack under a huge
overhang. But Burk had little trouble with
the Great Roof when he climbed it in dry
conditions during an earlier
recconnaisance. "It's balance is what it
is," he said, describing the five or six
hard moves requiring double-hand pressure
above his head on the ceiling.

It was the original 29th pitch, often known
as the Changing Corners or the Houdini
pitch, about 2500 feet up, that was the
killer. Burk is the only climber other than
Hill to have succeeded on this pitch, too,
and he swears the section to be 5.14b,
explaining excitedly: "There are no holds!"

"5.14b? No way!" said Hill, when asked to
comment. But Burk says other climbers can
vouch for the difficulty, citing Leo
Houlding, who reportedly tried the pitch
and agreed with the rating around the same
time that he flashed several hard pitches
on El Cap's El Niqo (see Hot Flashes No.
182 and 183). Burk, who is about 5-foot-9,
climbed the Changing Corners using
friction, extreme body tension, and
technique honed through a hundred days of
effort: "On one of the knee-bars you can
rip your stomach muscles out," he said.

While others pursued their own goals in and
around the Valley, Burk has remained
single-minded about his. "Even as a young
kid I wanted to spider-man up that line,"
recalls Burk referring to The Nose, and his
desire, without knowing anything about
climbing style, to free climb up.

Burk admits that toproping one pitch gave
the ascent an unfortunate blemish: "It was
not in the style in which I can sit in my
rocking chair later and look back on it,
totally happy," he stated. He then added:
"When it's dry, I'm going to go back and do
it in a day. I can't settle for anything
less."