A: I really doubt it, thought it’s certainly possible. That’s sort of the case for normal El Cap free routes like Freerider. But it’s really hard to imagine climbing progressing so far that the Dawn Wall is ever easy. But someday someone will repeat it, and it will probably take less time than Tommy and Kevin are taking. We’ll see. — Alex Honnold

A Glossary

For those of you unfamiliar with climbing lingo, Phil Powers, the executive director of the American Alpine Club, has provided what he calls “a short glossary of terms to put the vertical world in context”:

Free climbing is the most common form of climbing today. This is the style that Caldwell and Jorgeson are using to work up the Dawn Wall. Prudently, they have ropes that catch them if they fall, but those ropes do not help them ascend in any way. Clearly there is a huge psychological advantage in using a rope as a safety system to back up one’s climbing ability. But the rope provides no physical advantage in making progress up the rock. Progress is only made with strength, skill, perseverance and creativity.

Bouldering has become very popular in the past 20 years. It is just plain old climbing as we all have done on jungle gyms. Bouldering is generally done near to the ground on free-standing boulders, and it requires no protective equipment aside from a ground pad to soften a fall.

Free soloing is just like bouldering but taken to extreme heights. This is the style of climbing that Alex Honnold has made so famous. Whether one is 75 feet off the ground or 2,000, like Honnold, the results of a fall are the same — fatal. It seems crazy, I know. But think of a 2-year-old “free soloing” up a flight of wooden stairs. You and I “solo” that staircase with ease. At 2 it is potentially deadly. An accomplished and mentally adept climber can free solo unthinkable routes with great control. But let’s be clear: The consequences of a mistake or a miscalculation are devastating.

Aid climbing describes the style used to climb the Dawn Wall before Caldwell and Jorgeson. Aid refers to relying on tools — metal wedges, cams, hooks and pitons — to make upward progress. They are set in cracks or hooked onto edges in the rock, and climbers pull on them or hang short rope ladders from them. They effectively climb the tools, not the rock. Until now, aid was the only way climbers had ascended this route on El Capitan. Note that this type of climbing is not described by the word “free.” Free basically means free of aid.

A pitch is a general term that describes the distance between places where a team of climbers can anchor and rest. Free climbers like Caldwell and Jorgeson are using 200-foot ropes, so they must stop periodically at a logical anchor spot before running out of rope. A shorter rope would limit their access to resting spots on such a blank wall. A longer rope would be too heavy. On a wall like this, comfortable resting spots are rare. Rather than rest on ledges or terrain features, they rest by hanging on equipment anchored in the rock. It is expected that Caldwell and Jorgeson will complete the 3,000-foot Dawn Wall in roughly 31 pitches.

At some of those resting spots the team must sleep. From those anchors, they hang nylon tents built on aluminum frames. These “portaledges” are really quite comfortable. The trick is making one’s anchor safe enough that sleep is possible. I liken it to investing. Just as one must invest one’s money safely enough to sleep at night, one must build enough of an anchor to sleep with ease on a big wall (in addition to the tent, they wear harnesses and are tied in to their anchors with a rope — always). They carry or haul all of this equipment, as well as food and water, with them as they progress up the wall.

There is a lot more to climbing, and its various incarnations, than I have described here. Alpine climbers venture into the treacherous realms that include high altitude, snow and ice. Ice climbers swing picks into frozen water. But no matter the style, the question that many people have is: Why? All of us can identify with the tendency Americans have had to explore. We pushed west to the Pacific, deep into the ground for oil and minerals and to the moon and Mars out of our innate desire to explore and to expand the envelope of human potential. The vertical exploration, of both terrain and human potential, is, in my mind, just the logical extension of our basic desire to go places where none have gone before. — PHIL POWERS