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."