Oct 22, 2014
This is from Wikipedia because I couldn't possibly sum this up any better. Hans Florine has a long and storied history on El Cap, and in particular on The Nose. Here goes:
Hans Florine (born June 18, 1964)[3][4][5] is an American rock climber, who together withAlex Honnold holds the Speed Climb World Record for climbing The Nose of Yosemite’s El Capitan in 2:23:46 (2 hours, 23 minutes and 46 seconds), set on June 17, 2012[6] which broke the previous record of 2:36.45 set by Dean Potter and Sean Leary. Hans also previously held the same record with Yuji Hirayama for El Capitan in 2:37:05 (2 hours, 37 minutes and 5 seconds), set on October 12, 2008.[2] This broke their record of 2:43:33 set on July 2, 2008, which had broken the record that was set by the German "Huberbuam",Alexander Huber and Thomas Huber.[7] The two brothers climbed The Nose on October 8, 2007 in 2:45:45, breaking Hans' and Yuji's prior speed record.[8] El Capitan is traditionally climbed in three to five days.[9]The Nose route is 2,900 ft long (880 m) and features over 31 pitches of strenuous, exposed climbing.[9] Florine thus climbed The Nose at roughly 6 minutes per pitch. On July 30, 2005, Florine also completed a solo ascent of The Nose in just 11 hours and 41 minutes.[10] Solo ascents are characterized by climbing by yourself and require one person to do all the work.
Pretty impressive, huh? I wanted to know how he trained for such crazy shenanigans, and he kindly gave his time for an interview.
Intro and outro song: Yesterday by Build Buildings
Jim Thornburg