On the Nose by Hans Florine & JAYME MOYE

Author:Hans Florine & JAYME MOYE
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781493024995
Publisher: Falcon Guides

CHAPTER 6 Blind Ambition

In 1994, the year following my roped-solo ascent of the Nose, the Access Fund, an advocacy organization focused on conserving climbing areas in the United States, auctioned off a “Climb the Nose with Steve Schneider and Hans Florine” expedition as part of their annual fund-raising dinner. Two really cool guys in their late 20s, Craig Cleveland and Jim Soash, donated a couple thousand dollars for the “privilege.” But really, I was the one who felt privileged. People were starting to associate me with the Nose, and I couldn’t think of a bigger honor in the world of big-wall climbing.

Meanwhile, it was sport climbing that paid my meager living expenses. On US soil I remained undefeated in speed. In 1995 I got invited to the first-ever X Games, held in Newport, Rhode Island. Part competition, part festival, the event spanned a full week and was the brainchild of sports-broadcasting network ESPN. It focused exclusively on “extreme sports,” which included in-line skating, skateboarding, BMX biking, mountain biking, street luge, bungee jumping, water-ski jumping, and rock climbing. I won Speed the inaugural year (as well as in 1996 and 1997), earning $1,000 and an offer from Steve West at Boreal to pay me for doing climbing slideshows.

Five years after leaving Parker Seals, I was still living out of my ’76 GMC van and generally enjoying life on the road. I traveled from popular sport-climbing cliffs like Rifle in Colorado to local climbing competitions like Phil’s Backyard Cave Comp, to the big national competitions in Seattle and North Conway. Following the sport-climbing scene—and reuniting with the same folks every few weeks at the crags and comps—made for a fun lifestyle.

Still, the projects I looked forward to the most were the ones on the big walls of Yosemite. For whatever reason, I thoroughly enjoyed covering huge amounts of granite in one push. And I was starting to get good at it. In June 1994 I succeeded in my first linkup “in a day”: Shipoopi and I climbed the Nose followed by the Steck-Salathé on Sentinel Rock in less than 24 hours. We also completed “the El Cap Trifecta,” climbing three routes on the big stone, including the Nose, in a day. Plus, I nabbed my fifth ascent of the Salathé, which had become my second-favorite route on El Cap after the Nose, and set a new speed record, with Shipoopi, on Lurking Fear, a nineteen-pitch, 2,000-foot route to the far left of the Nose, in 8:52.

As for the Nose, there suddenly seemed to be an endless supply of colorful characters who wanted to take a run up El Cap’s original line with me. Besides Access Fund bidders, I climbed the Nose with old friends from the comp scene, new friends from the climbing gym, my brother Neal, and even a caver from Puerto Rico by the name of Rossano Boscarino, who held two world records in “mechanical vertical rope climbing.” But my most unforgettable ascent in the mid-1990s was with Erik Weihenmayer.

In April 1996 I went to the Phoenix Bouldering contest for the tenth year in a row.

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