Breakfast of Champions
So yesterday we topped out on the Zodiac. Breakfast? What ever fig newtons and power bars I was having with my water after sunrise and the first thousand pull ups. The haul bags came over the edge around 3PM, ending our ascent. This was followed by a maybe 4 hour piggy back ride back to the nearest parking lot on the Valley floor which was fairly difficult. That was followed by going to the meadow to get my wheel chair and then of course the journey back to camp for beers and chips and chickens, well chicken parts, bunches of them.
The day before at 12:18 PM we started up the Zodiac on El Cap. I had had a cheese horn, an apple horn, and black coffee for breakfast. Then we went to the El Cap meadow to prepare to have five guys carry me and a bunch others carry all our gear to the base of the Zodiac route. Was this maybe a mile of talus and Manzanita trees? It was probably 1000 feet of elevation gain. There were still 1800 feet of gain left to cover. Ammon McNeely started the lead. My brother Tim took it through the cold and dark.
The day before that was the day before the climb. For breakfast I had just black coffee. Mark Welman had shown in the morning to loan us the equipment I would use to pull myself up El Cap.With his help, I made an Excel spreadsheet listing the history of El Capitan disabled ascents. He invented the activity back in 1989.
I had oatmeal with my black coffee for breakfast the nextmost previous day before that one. I had it with cinnamon. It was awesome- I'd been meaning for at least a month to start eating oatmeal as part of a better nutrition regimen to help me get up hard things like Mauna Kea and El Capitan.
But so if you are still reading: Victory breakfast, the breakfast of the morning (well, like 11 AM or so) after having done a push up El cap. A push is a single effort. We were trying for a one day thing, 24 hours or less. Maybe it was 27 hours- not a failure though, just a different category. Still it was over 1700 pull ups. Well not real pull ups. Some were 3/4 pull ups. None of them require lowering down, just pulling up. But really we had just gone up El Cap. We did it between noon Monday and 3PM Tuesday, working through the night- the cold dark night. I sat there eating Cheerios and viamin D milk, cold milk- like so many mornings. So many safe warm mornings with a simple and soothingly nutritious meal. The funny thing was the bowl and spoon felt as if they were heavy. My muscles were just about trembling with the effort, as if I'd worked hard recently.
The day before at 12:18 PM we started up the Zodiac on El Cap. I had had a cheese horn, an apple horn, and black coffee for breakfast. Then we went to the El Cap meadow to prepare to have five guys carry me and a bunch others carry all our gear to the base of the Zodiac route. Was this maybe a mile of talus and Manzanita trees? It was probably 1000 feet of elevation gain. There were still 1800 feet of gain left to cover. Ammon McNeely started the lead. My brother Tim took it through the cold and dark.
The day before that was the day before the climb. For breakfast I had just black coffee. Mark Welman had shown in the morning to loan us the equipment I would use to pull myself up El Cap.With his help, I made an Excel spreadsheet listing the history of El Capitan disabled ascents. He invented the activity back in 1989.
I had oatmeal with my black coffee for breakfast the nextmost previous day before that one. I had it with cinnamon. It was awesome- I'd been meaning for at least a month to start eating oatmeal as part of a better nutrition regimen to help me get up hard things like Mauna Kea and El Capitan.
But so if you are still reading: Victory breakfast, the breakfast of the morning (well, like 11 AM or so) after having done a push up El cap. A push is a single effort. We were trying for a one day thing, 24 hours or less. Maybe it was 27 hours- not a failure though, just a different category. Still it was over 1700 pull ups. Well not real pull ups. Some were 3/4 pull ups. None of them require lowering down, just pulling up. But really we had just gone up El Cap. We did it between noon Monday and 3PM Tuesday, working through the night- the cold dark night. I sat there eating Cheerios and viamin D milk, cold milk- like so many mornings. So many safe warm mornings with a simple and soothingly nutritious meal. The funny thing was the bowl and spoon felt as if they were heavy. My muscles were just about trembling with the effort, as if I'd worked hard recently.
posted by Sean at 9:44 PM
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