"Alex didn't think I could do it." That was Dierdre Wolownick yesterday, in a blog post describing her latest feat—climbing El Capitan at the age of 70. As for Alex, who is he, and why does Wolownick care what he thinks? He's professional rock-climber Alex Honnold, who also happens to be Wolownick's son—and who apparently underestimated his determined mom. The Guardian reports that after last month's climb, she is once again the oldest woman to ever ascend the granite slab in California's Yosemite National Park.
On her Sept. 23 climb, Wolownick broke her own record from 2017, when at 66 she became the oldest woman to climb the 3,000-foot rock formation via the Lurking Fear route, making it up El Capitan in 13 hours, then back down in another six. Her son is already an El Capitan legend himself: His record-breaking climb up the monolith that same year was the first to be achieved without ropes or safety equipment, a feat documented in the Oscar-winning documentary Free Solo. For Wolownick, her latest climb was similarly harrowing, if not a bit safer than Honnold's.
The senior climber, who this time went up the rock via the easier Descent route, describes in a blog post a two-hour "gnarly" hike through the woods to kick things off, an arduous trek that involved "grabbing small trees and edges of boulders or whatever else helped." Then came hours of climbing granite, "[walking] steeply uphill, endlessly, grabbing whatever tiny edges you can find"—all while contending with a foot injury from a surgery gone wrong and a deep fear of falling. She made it to the summit in 10 hours, where she enjoyed celebratory champagne and birthday cupcakes at sunset, per the Los Angeles Times.
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Wolownick is no stranger to physical challenges: The New York Times notes she taught herself to swim in her 40s and started running in her 50s. It was more than a decade ago, as a sexagenarian, when she decided to take up climbing, partly to get closer to Honnold. "Climbing El Cap at 70 takes its toll, physically, mentally, emotionally," Wolownick writes in her blog post. "I'm not 'down' yet. Not sure I ever will be, completely." (More rock climbing stories.)
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