How Austrian climber Babsi Zangerl completed a ‘hard to believe’ historic ascent of El Capitan

By George Ramsay, CNN

(CNN) — On a vertical rockface like El Capitan, the soaring slab of granite in California’s Yosemite National Park, perfection is an elusive, almost impossible goal for professional climbers.

It can take years of experience to master a route to the top of the 3,000-foot wall, such is its difficulty and magnitude. That’s precisely why Babsi Zangerl’s recent “flash” of El Cap is so unique and impressive.

In climbing, to “flash” a route is to reach the top on the first attempt without any falls – a feat never before achieved on El Cap prior to Zangerl’s maiden summit of Freerider last month. From bottom to top, she was faultless.

“It was hard to believe,” the Austrian climber tells CNN Sport. “I was so surprised that this just happened and that I didn’t fall … I could have fallen so many times on that climb.”

Freerider is a popular route up El Capitan, the same one taken by Alex Honnold when he climbed the rockface without ropes or harnesses in the Oscar-winning documentary “Free Solo.”

Zangerl has lots of experience climbing on El Cap and around Yosemite but had never previously attempted the 30-plus pitches up Freerider. The challenging Monster Offwidth section – a 60-meter-long (almost 197 feet) crack around halfway through the climb – had put her off, and flashing the route, she says, wasn’t a long-standing target for her.

“It was more that we just could try to go flash and see how far we can get,” Zangerl explains. “But the expectations were really low, so it was not a big goal from the beginning … There are some really slabby pitches where you don’t have hand holds, so you’re mostly standing on the bad feet, and you always can slip off.

“The chance was really low – I didn’t have the feeling that we have a big chance on the flash.”

It was only once she had conquered the Boulder Problem – perhaps the hardest, most treacherous part of the climb with only razor-thin holds on which to grip – that the flash seemed possible.

“Then it was kind of: you don’t want to f**k it up on the last part,” says Zangerl.

Other climbers have come close to flashing a route up El Capitan before Zangerl, with asterisks often being placed alongside their completions.

British climber Pete Whittaker, for instance, tried to flash Freerider in 2014 but went back down on the first day due to traffic on the route. He then fell further up the climb and instead switched to Teflon Corner, which is another option on the same route.

“I knew that he (Whittaker) was really close to flashing it,” says Zangerl, who adds that she didn’t spend time looking into previous attempts too much because it “would have stressed me more.”

Indeed, not overthinking things was central to the 36-year-old’s successful ascent, and she says that it was more mentally demanding than any project she has tackled before, given the pressure of having just one attempt. It was when climbing, rather than resting, that Zangerl felt most at peace.

“It’s easier to be really focused while climbing,” she says, “then I don’t have any other thoughts. It’s easier to focus, but as soon as I stopped climbing, I go to bed. Then I have more pressure.”

The whole ascent took around four days, with nights spent camped out on the wall. Accompanying Zangerl was her boyfriend and climbing partner Jacopo Larcher, who was also trying to flash the route before a single fall on the Boulder Problem rendered his attempt unsuccessful.

It meant that there were mixed feelings when the pair reached the top of the climb – joy at what Zangerl had just accomplished, but sadness that Larcher couldn’t match the feat. In flash climbing, the first attempt is also the last and even a tiny mistake can prove costly.

“I briefly felt relieved,” Larcher wrote on Instagram about his fall on the Boulder Problem, “as now I could just climb the rest without pressure… but after topping out, feelings changed.

“I won’t lie. This one meant a lot to me and failure is, and will be, hard to accept. We had an amazing time up there and I couldn’t be more proud of Babsi and her achievement!!!! Yet at the same time the walk of shame on the valley floor is feeling hard.”

As for Zangerl, she believes that she simply had luck on her side with the flash attempt – a key ingredient for success when the margin for error is so great. Convinced she would fall in the latter stages of the climb, she credits Larcher with helping her to reach the top.

“He stayed pretty cool after he had a fall,” says Zangerl. “It was really disappointing for him, but he kept the psych high and supported me, and he wasn’t in a bad mood. He really believed in me, that I have a chance to do it, and this helped a lot.

“I trust him 100%, we work perfectly together. And even when I climb with him, I can also take more risk. I know that he will always give me a soft belay … I feel pretty safe and this trust in each other, I think it’s really, really important.”

The pair were blessed with good conditions during their climb – cloudy skies, cool temperatures, and hardly anyone else on the route at the same time.

And as further evidence that luck was on her side, Zangerl also had a chance meeting with Honnold and his friend and fellow climber Tommy Caldwell in a café the day before the flash attempt.

Honnold, who knows Freerider’s intricate web of cracks and ledges better than anyone else in the world, offered advice on how to take a break while negotiating the Monster Offwidth by wedging a leg into the long crevice.

“It worked perfectly,” says Zangerl. “I could rest in this position and that was a good help.”

A historic flash of Freerider, her seventh free climb on El Cap before scaling the Golden Gate route soon after, adds to Zangerl’s already impressive climbing resume. This achievement, she says, has garnered more attention than any other in her career.

“I topped out that route, and the day after, it was already on a television in Austria,” says Zangerl. “I didn’t even tell my mother, but it was already on the television, and she called me, (saying): ‘What did you do?’ And I was like, ‘Really?!’”

Now back home in Austria, Zangerl is returning to her day job as a hospital radiographer. She hopes to go back to Yosemite late next year, with many routes still to try and perhaps more climbing history to be made in the future.

“It’s always a happy place to be,” says Zangerl. “In long-term goals, maybe it would be cool to put up our own route somewhere. That would a big goal – to do a first ascent.”

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