Category: El Capitan

Yesterday's News & Observer got from its staffer Kerstin Nordstrom an engrossing tale of technical climbing and geological mystery that is playing out in one of the nation's foremost national parks. The story is also hobbled by some over-simplifications and errors, but not enough to cipple it.

The news is that a UNC grad student and his professor are taking advantage of the former's technical climbing skills to painstakingly sample the sheer granite monolith that is El Capitan, a 3000-foot-+ monster of almost vertical walls in Yosemite Valley. Visitors often put binoculars on the thing and are surprised and sometime terrified-by-imagining-themselve-there when they see people climbing slowly toward the top, hanging on ropes and spending nights sleeping on a ledge or even...