Was my pleasure to visit Yosemite one day lastweek and on way out stopped to note a number of climbers on Capitan. Great sight even with the naked eye. How many make the climb on an ave day? Local bystanders did not know and as we were on way out were unable to learn of this number.Maybe divide into full round trip and partial.

-- Warren Hodges (wfhod@adnc.com), September 28, 1998

Answers

Here's a crude estimate based on the two times I have climbed El Cap: for the most popular route (The Nose), an average of 1 party tops out per day over the 6 month climbing season (May-Oct). This is just a guess, it could be 2 or even 4, and often that many parties do top out on a busy day. But you have to remember that in the middle of July when it is 100 degrees it may be zero parties per day or a whole week.

If we assume the average party has 3 people, this is about 500 people per year climbing the Nose, I'd guess another 500 may attempt it but rap off at some point.

This is just a single route, but another wild estimate is that about 3-6 parties top out on El Cap each day via any route. This gives 3000 people successfully climbing El Cap per year. If it takes them an average of 4 days to do the route this would be 36-72 people per day on El Cap, not counting those that aren't going to make it, and 72-144 counting everybody.

Comments, anyone?

-George

-- George Bell (bell@advtech.uswest.com), September 30, 1998.