Rock climber Sasha DiGiulian is no stranger to suffering. She has more than 30 first ascents to her name, trained hard to win the U.S. National Championship three times, and, through bleeding fingers and hailstorms, set a big-wall climbing record on a 2000-foot wall in Spain called Rayu with Brette Harrington and Matilda Söderlund in 2022.
But right now, DiGiulian is suffering in a different way. She’s sitting in a four-by-six-foot tent 2,600 feet in the air, waiting out the weather in a portaledge on Yosemite’s El Capitan. When Outside called her on November 17, she had already been there for four days, 14 days into her current attempt of free-climbing the Direct Line. The weather’s not supposed to break until November 21. DiGiulian is determined to complete the route, and she wants to see if Mother Nature will give her a chance.
We caught up with DiGiulian to learn what it’s like to wait out the storm in a very tiny tent.
Outside: Can you explain to me the project you’re working on, and why you’re up on El Cap right now?
Sasha DiGiulian: Over the last couple of years, I’ve been trying this route called the Direct Line (also known as Platinum). It’s a really hard climb on El Cap, and I’m actually here with Elliot Faber, who developed the climb with Rob Miller from 2012 to 2016. Over the last couple of years, I’ve just been trying it and checking it out. I was drawn to how beautiful the climb is, and the more I climbed on it, the more I was interested in one day going for it. This season, the plan was to come out here, work on it, and then go for a ground-up free-climbing push attempt, which is going from the ground and trying to free every pitch from there to the top. It’s like 39 pitches, so it’s really long and stacked.
Right now, we’re on pitch 32, which is called Gold Ledge, and is at 2,600 feet. I’m in my own little portaledge, called the Edelrid Literider, which is the same one I used on my trip to Madagascar, and then Elliot is in a Black Diamond one. So it’s kind of nice that we have our own little tents. Mine’s like a magic carpet ride in the wind. It’s so light that I’ve just been trying to keep the rain out and keep some weight in it so I don’t fly around.
Can you describe the portaledge you’re in and what the weather’s like right now?
It’s basically a four-by-six-foot tent-like contraption that is made of Dyneema. It has four poles that keep it as a flatbed, and then there’s a cover to it that makes it a tent for the rain. The rain tent is a separate contraption, but you include it when there are impending storms. Now I’ve obviously got it on and in the high winds. I was just watching the poles come down to chest level at night, and I was like, “Oh God, please don’t snap.”
It’s day five of this crazy storm. The temperatures dropped yesterday quite a bit, and now it’s kind of a mixture of like snowy ice and rain. It kind of feels like all of California has been raining down on us for the last several days.
The weather forecast changes so much that it’s hard to get an accurate read three to four days out. I know that some people may wonder, “Why are you there? Did you not look at the weather?” But the weather frequently changes in Yosemite, so it’s hard to tell with a ten-day extended forecast what it’s going to be like.
What are you doing to kill time?
I’m trying to conserve my phone battery. This is actually my first phone call because I have mostly been on airplane mode. We do have Goal Zero charge packs, but there’s no sun and we literally can’t leave our tents.
I have a water gallon that’s carved out to be a pee trough, so I’ll pee into it and then pour it out the bottom. And then we have WAG (Waste Alleviating Gel) bags to shit in.
I’ve read two books so far. I read the Paradise Problem, which is like a beach read, and then I read the Nightingale. I just started reading Chelsea Handler’s I’ll Have What She’s Having. I have my Kindle. I need to charge it because it’s gonna die soon, but I’ve been doing audiobook and Kindle reading, alternating between the two.
Things get wet so quickly here, that I’ll put things on my belly to try to use my body heat to try to make the water evaporate, which is what my climbing partner Elliot told me to do. I sit on my sleeping bag to keep it dry.
I have a JetBoil, so in the morning I’ll make coffee, and I have freeze-dried food, so I’ve been eating Lyofood for breakfast. I have Send Bars for lunch, which is my company. And then Lyofood for dinner.
I can’t really stretch, which is tough, because the space is so small and half of it’s wet. I’m a little concerned about how tight my body is getting, but I’m trying to do some shoulder stretches and stuff like that.
When I go off airplane mode, I’ve been reading the meeting notes from my company’s meetings and emailing a bit back and forth with some of the people I work with on Send. We’ve got a new bar launch coming up in January, so there are a million moving pieces.
How long do you think you’ll be up there?
Friday the weather lifts. Hopefully, it takes a day or two to dry. That’s really what I’m most concerned about, and then hopefully we’re off by next Friday. It’s really hard to tell. We still have some challenging pitches to climb. I have climbed some of the challenging pitches already in my seasons prior to trying the route. One of the crux pitches is this 5.13d that I sent last year, and I know what it’s like. We also have this epic roof patched, which I’m most concerned about being wet, so I actually asked our cameraman, who’s here filming with us, Pablo Durana, to investigate a cordless leaf blower in case we need it. It would be so extra, but we’re pulling out all the stops.
How are you keeping your spirits up?
I’m just trying to stay optimistic and thinking about when the weather breaks. This last Saturday, we had a window where we could bail because the rain stopped for a moment, and it was the first reprieve. We had been talking about what it would be like to just go down and get off the climb, but this has been a dream climb of mine for so long. I actually have had two dreams while on the wall, where I woke up and regretted bailing. I had the sting of disappointment and not giving it all that I had. I don’t know what’s up with that dream, but it happened twice, which is really interesting.
And then I’m on this text thread with Alex Honnold and Tommy Caldwell, and Tommy sent me a text, where he said, “Just remember you’re on a pretty incredible adventure. I don’t think you would regret giving it every possible chance.” I thought that was super encouraging.
A week of life and going through something grueling isn’t all that bad in retrospect. I don’t know what’s possible. I don’t know how my body will feel after this. I don’t know if the rock will dry. But I do know that I want to try and do this climb so badly, and it means so much to me to be here trying.
The number one thing is, are we safe? And we are. We’re safer to stay put right now than to go anywhere anyway. And then number two is, if the weather breaks, can we try and climb?
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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