Best Capitan Poems

I soft-swing on the granite face ...
Cuddled close to the cooling stone like a spider,
Sun slithering into the emerald-studded reach to seal the day.
I dig into my hip sack for the last usable piton -
There are a few old ones driven into the rock to...

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El Capitan - you are a joint
   Within the Sierra Nevadas
Of punctuated granite -
   A sentinel of the ages. 

Sylvestris partition -
   Beam of silver - or steel - 
Are you a step to heaven
   Or a...

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Right foot into this little dimple that you can toe in on aggressively so it’s opposing the left hand, then you can, like, zag over across to this flat, down-pulling crimp that’s small but you can bite it.
[From Honnold’s climbing notebook.]

For me, the most transcendental...

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Why not write in the infinite sky?
So the words would flow in all directions,
We would tell stories of how it all began,
Of how thought appeared long before the stars,
And the truth was born from the absurd, the unthinkable.

Is life a drifting boat, without a rudder...

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