Cat: Welcome to The Broad Beta Podcast, and today we have a bonus episode celebrating Amity Warme's November send of The Pre-Muir Wall, a 5.13c/d 33-pitch route on El Cap in Yosemite National Park. Amity joined a very short list of climbers in freeing this route. And if you haven't listened to our full length interview yet with Amity, please check it out.

It was such a pleasure chatting with her. So without further ado, let's welcome Amity back to the show. Let's just start by you telling us why you chose the Pre-Muir Wall and what it means to you as a climbing goal.

Amity: Yeah, I think kind of my head space around picking new goals on El Cap progressively over the years has been, yes, I guess in that mindset of like progression of like, okay, what's going to be the next step up from what I did the year before? Or the season before or whatever? El Cap feels like this really interesting place to return to every so often and test myself against that standard or the history there, whatever it is.

So it feels neat to kind of choose that next progression every time. And yeah, Pre-Muir was definitely a step up from previous ones I've done in terms of just overall difficulty and individual pitch difficulty and then more hard pitches as well. The thing that ended up being the most challenging about it though, why it took so long to do, was the sun and how hot it was still at that point in the season.

And that was kind of like the window that we had to do it in, but it was really hot in the valley still. And that aspect of the wall and the sun angle in the fall, you're just getting sun the entire day, like direct sun the whole day. So like the crux pitches were going into the sun at like 7 a.m. And then not in the shade and cooled off again till like 7 p.m. So we would climb like a pitch in the morning or do a go on the crux in the morning and then sit in the portaledge for like 12 hours in the sun.

And you're just sitting at the base of these crux pitches because you kind of do that for each of these cruxes, you just sit at the base of the crux pitch for 12 hours thinking about it.

Cat: Oh my God.

Amity: Getting just like sauna’ed in the portaledge. And then finally like 7 p.m. rolls around and the rock is starting to cool off. And you're like, okay, I get my warm up in and one or two burns.

And if I don't do it, then I'm sitting here the entire day again tomorrow. So that was such a weird mental thing to deal with, of every go matters so much. And then it turns into this like, okay, it's hard to get good goes for both of us to get good goes on these crux pitches and make upward progress.

Because like a lot of the climbing in between the cruxes is still hard, scary 5.12. We don't really want to be up there just trying to onsight it in the full sun. Sun.

Yeah. So that was the biggest crux of the whole route was just like, how do we deal with this much sun?

And it ended up being we're just climbing super early morning and then late into the night. And then that turns into a weird schedule.

Cat: Wow, how late into the night were you climbing?

Amity: One of the nights we went to 11 or something to try and get up to the next ledge to set up camp because the next day it was going to storm all day.

Cat: Oh my God.

Amity: Yeah, most nights we weren't going quite that late.

Cat: Can you tell me, a low point and a high point?

Amity: Yeah, it's weird. This one felt like it had more low points than any route I've done previously. It felt like a lot of the time up there was like the headspace of like, I know I'm going to be really proud of staying in this and sticking it out, but I'm not having fun right now.

Yeah, I think low points were just like, when you get to like 10 in the morning and you've already been sitting in the portaledge for three hours and being like, I have to sit here for eight more hours until I climb again.

Cat: Oh my god. Oh my god.

Amity: Sitting in the sun.

Cat: That sounds really awful.

Amity: Just like stewing in your mind of like, okay, what was the beta on that? Like, how did I, what am I going to do? I'm like, yeah.

Cat: Oh my god. That sounds really, really bad actually.

Amity: High points were probably those last couple of days, having a couple of friends come in to shoot some photos and belay for those last couple of efforts on the final crux pitch. And honestly, just having feeling so supported from so many people on the ground of people sending me messages of like, stay with it.

You can do it. You're strong. You can do this.

Just so much of that and feeling so believed in and so supported, which is also weird because then you're like, I don't want to let all these people down.

Cat: Yeah. Yeah, I bet.

Amity: Yeah. I think just the high point was feeling the rallying around of so many people who were invested in it. This was a cool takeaway for me.

There are so many days up there just sitting in the sun. Waking it out, being like, man, it'd be so much easier and more comfortable to just quit, to just bail whatever, bail out and go down and be done. Yeah.

Just being like, no, I know if I do that, it's going to be more comfortable, but two days from now, I'm going to be so disappointed in myself for not sticking it out. I have the ability and the time and health and freedom to be up here right now. Of course, I'm going to stay.

It's trying to find the mental space to be like, to not take the comfortable way out of it. I didn't want to get to the ground and talk to my friends down there. And I just like thinking about the example that I'm setting, especially when some of these younger climbers are up on the wall and messaging me.

And if I'm like, oh, yeah, it's kind of hard. Like, you should just give up. That's not the example I want to set.

I was so excited to come down and go for a walk.

Cat: Oh, my God. And just talk to other people, I'm sure.

Amity: Yeah, and, eat a vegetable. These two Italians, Camilla and Pietro, climbed the Pre-Muir, the week before I went up there and did it way faster. It's just they have so much more margin on those grades.

Yeah, they were able to do it way faster than I did because it's such a step down from their highest end of ability, whereas for me, it's so much closer to my highest end of what I'm capable of at this point.

It takes so much longer for me to do it.

Cat: Well, that's super interesting. I think a lot of us think about the mental challenges with climbing only in terms of fear, but it's really interesting to hear about it in terms of waiting for perfect conditions and being siloed with one partner and being in a tiny space for six days. So thank you for sharing all of that.

And thank you to the listeners for tuning in to this bonus episode. Like I mentioned in the beginning, check out the full length interview if you want to hear more of Amity, and check out our website for more stories, photos, recipes, and more at broadbeta.com. Intro and segue music are by Halizna Radio, and the music in the background right now is by Ketsa.

All music in this episode was sourced from freemusicarchive.org.