Climber Florine knows El Capitan's Nose ROCK CLIMBING Lafayette man is the master of Yosemite's El Capitan - he keeps setting records for fastest time up famed cliff

Hans Florine does a quick climb at Diablo Rock Gym, which he manages, in Concord, CA Friday June 22nd, 2012. Hans Florine set a new speed record climbing up the nose of El Capitan on Father's Day in June. Hans Florine does a quick climb at Diablo Rock Gym, which he manages, in Concord, CA Friday June 22nd, 2012. Hans Florine set a new speed record climbing up the nose of El Capitan on Father's Day in June. Photo: Michael Short, Special To The Chronicle Photo: Michael Short, Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 13 Caption Close Climber Florine knows El Capitan's Nose 1 / 13 Back to Gallery

Hans Florine moved swiftly, jamming fingers in holds, dipping a knee, crossing over, reaching out with a toe here and a heel there, effortlessly switching directions as he moved up the most difficult wall in his Concord gym, an overhanging pitch with odd angles and widely spaced handholds.

He was 20 feet up the climbing wall in a few moments, seemingly expending no energy.

"Are you watching his footwork?" another climber asked his awed friend sitting nearby. "I wish I could do that."

Florine, 48, of Lafayette has been doing that for most of his life, except his normal venue is the 2,900-foot granite cliff known as El Capitan, in Yosemite National Park. Florine is the general manager of Diablo Rock gym in Concord, but he owns the Nose of El Capitan.

On June 17, Florine and young climbing sensation Alex Honnold raced up the Nose - the most prominent climbing route following the prow of the world famous granite precipice - in 2 hours, 23 minutes and 46 seconds, shattering the previous record by 13 minutes.

It was a statement - a sword in the rock - by Florine, who, with a variety of partners, has set the speed climbing record on the Nose nine times in the past 22 years. The latest feat has bolstered his status as a hero in his gym and among a wide range of friends, but he remains a controversial figure in the climbing world.

Florine, a former All-American pole vaulter who burst onto the climbing scene in the late 1980s as the long-blond-haired figure known as "Hollywood Hans," is unabashedly competitive in a sport where many practitioners preach Zen.

"My philosophy is, What adventure can I find that pushes me to my limit?" said Florine, part owner of Touchstone Climbing, which runs seven climbing gyms around the Bay Area, including Diablo Rock. "I'm super, super lucky that climbing rewards experience and endurance. There are not many sports where a 48-year-old can run with a 26-year-old."

Florine's fixation on the stopwatch, which, to some extent, has turned one of the most spectacular climbing routes into a racetrack, irritates many rock climbing aficionados who see the constant one-upmanship as a sullying of the purity of the sport, an infusion of crass machismo into their karmic space.

Florine's greatest rival, Dean Potter, is among those who claim to hate the competitive atmosphere, yet he keeps coming back for more. Potter, 38, of Foresta, a small community within Yosemite, is famous for death-defying walks over canyons on slack lines, wing suit jumps and terrifying climbs over yawning abysses. He has broken Florine's Nose record three times, the last time with Sean Leary in 2011, when they set the standard of 2 hours, 36 minutes and 45 seconds that Florine recently squashed.

Bitter rivalry

In a documentary called "Reel Rock Tour," Potter appeared to be somewhat bitter about the whole thing. When asked whether he thought Florine would try to break the record again, Potter angrily professed not to care and threatened to knock the camera out of the videographer's hands.

Those who know Florine say he is widely misunderstood. Honnold, 26, of Sacramento said competition to Florine is not a macho endeavor, but a personal test of willpower, athleticism and tactical expertise.

"He's the kind of guy who loves competition for the sake of competing. It's not about winning and losing. Its about having a really good competition," said Honnold, whose climbs with no ropes or protection thousands of feet up cliffs, including one broadcast on "60 Minutes," have made him the new superstar of climbing.

"A lot of rock climbers are about the spiritual aspect, of being one with nature, but to him, it's an athletic feat," Honnold said. "Hans is just so much more honest about all that stuff. He's not all wrapped up in 'Oh, I just do it for the purity ...' The way some climbers find it grating, I find it refreshing. I think it is honorable in a way."

From poles to rocks

Florine's adventurous spirit was forged during his childhood as a military brat. He was born in Fort Lee, Va., one of three sons and a daughter of a career Army officer, who did a tour of duty in Vietnam. His father, Thomas Florine, met his mother, Maryanne, in France, where she was teaching English. The family lived a peripatetic life following Thomas' military assignments. They moved from Virginia to Texas to Illinois and finally to Moraga, where Hans went to junior high and high school.

The whole family was athletic - his sister played basketball at Cal. Florine, who is 6 feet 1, weighed only 135 pounds in high school, so football was out.

"I was restless, and I didn't want to sit on the bench. In track and field, no one sits on the bench," Florine said. "I tried pole vault, which is a weird sport that nobody else did, and I was good at it."

In 1982, Florine set the Campolindo High School pole vault record of 14 feet 3 inches, a mark that stood until 2011. He then became an All-American pole vaulter at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

Florine said he started rock climbing his second year in college when a friend brought him to a big boulder in a field with a barbed wire fence on either side of it. He was hooked.

"I loved it from the start, but I came into it as an athlete from other sports," he said. "I was quintessentially the opposite of what climbers were back in the '80s. It was just presumed if you were a climber that you smoked dope. I wasn't interested in partying or getting drunk. For me it was, 'Oh, I've got this sling over my shoulder with all these cool tools and I get to try all these different racetracks and they are in all these cool places.' "

After college, Florine moved to Culver City and worked for two years for a company that made the seals on tubes and panels for airplanes and space shuttles. He also had a unique training regimen, setting up a makeshift climbing wall underneath the Hollywood Freeway.

'Hollywood Hans'

Florine, now known as "Hollywood Hans" thanks to his underpass training, quit his job in 1989, lived out of a van and traveled around the country entering climbing competitions. He was the first person to win national championships for speed climbing and difficulty in the same year, 1991. Later that year he won the speed climbing world title in Frankfurt, defeating Frenchman Jacky Godoffe in an epic two-out-of-three final race up the wall.

"That was the turning point for me," Florine said. "It was like, 'Wow, I'm internationally substantiated.' "

Florine then set his sights on Yosemite, the epicenter of American rock climbing since John Muir went up the summit block of Cathedral Peak in 1869.

First ascent

The sport of rock climbing really came of age in the 1950s and '60s when the indomitable Warren Harding and purist Royal Robbins were at the top of their game. The two men led expeditions on many mountains, but El Capitan became a kind of symbol of their rivalry, probably because the spectacular, 7,569-foot elevation peak was considered impossible to climb until they arrived on the scene.

Harding, Wayne Merry and George Whitmore completed the first ascent of El Capitan over 47 days in 1958. Two years later, Robbins, Tom Frost, Joe Fitchsen and Chuck Pratt did it in seven days, marking the first continuous climb to the top.

The route, which followed the outermost section of the awesome sheer wall, is now called the Nose. With 32 pitches, or rope lengths, it is one of the most arduous climbs in the world, with sections that jut outward, exposing climbers to heart-stopping views downward. Thirteen climbers have plummeted to their deaths since 1973.

In 1975, Jim Bridwell, John Long and Billy Westbay made the first one-day ascent of the Nose. Florine broke the record for the first time in 1990 when he and his climbing idol at the time, Steve Schneider, topped out in 8 hours and 6 minutes.

Two other climbers, Dave Shultz and Peter Croft, broke the record a week later, and Florine and his various partners have been breaking and re-breaking it ever since.

Potter, who did not return phone calls, traded the Nose record with Florine twice in 2001, prompting one magazine to run a photo illustration of them seemingly glaring at each other.

"I don't have any particular thing with Dean Potter at all," said Florine, who believes Potter is conflicted about being pressured by sponsors into competitive situations. "He has to get the attention of the media so his sponsors will pay him, so he does stunts that get him attention. You can't fault him for that. I'm not much different, except I don't make a living climbing."

'The Project'

Florine, who is sponsored by Power Bar, gets all the energy bars he wants, but climbs solely because he loves it. He admits he enjoys the attention, but, to him, competition is a fun way to measure himself.

"It's not about making money for me," he said. "It's about breaking personal barriers on the most famous route in all of climbing."

His life now is mostly about his wife, Jacqueline, a former supermodel turned alpinist, and their two children, Pierce, 9, and Marianna, 11. Jacqueline, whom he met through a friend in 1999, just celebrated the 10-year anniversary of becoming the first and only woman to solo climb the Nose. She calls her husband's obsession with the record "The Project."

"There was full disclosure when we married, and I was fully a climber before I married him," said Jacqueline, who has also competed in ultra marathons. "Our culture is climbing and the mountains. We're both adept at managing appropriate levels of risk."

Florine, who is known as a master tactician and technical expert in the dangerous art of climbing while belaying, or using ropes, teaches climbing and fitness at his gym and readily gives advice to those attempting to break his records.

He says one of his greatest climbing achievements was in 1996, when he led Erik Weihenmayer, the first blind person to complete the climb, up the Nose.

No mistakes

He has also made friends around the world and supporters among the pioneers of the sport, including Frost, who is a staunch defender of Florine's style as both a climber and a man.

"Hans Florine has been a huge contributor in that line of Yosemite climbers who have improved the quality of the sport," Frost said. "He's been the foremost practitioner and teacher of speed climbing."

While critics say Florine is playing a dangerous game of roulette that will eventually lead to a deadly fall, his friends think differently.

"He's just so good at this game," said Honnold, who believes the record will go even lower, possibly below 2 hours. "He never makes mistakes. Things just don't go wrong with him."