By Neil Bentley.

The plan seemed relatively straightforward back in Britain, 4 weeks in Yosemite Valley, California for our attempt of Salathe Wall. The route takes the impressive line up the huge Western face of El Capitan. Originally aided in 1961 by Royal Robbins, Chuck Pratt and Tom Frost, and finally free climbed by Todd Skinner and Paul Piana in 1988. It still represents one of the ultimate routes to free climb consisting of 35 pitches and over 3000 ft of perfect rock. Yes, we did do Salathe in a sort of fashion. A lot happened in a short period, so sit back and enjoy this brief summary of our little adventure.

Arrived in the valley on the 8th of May. The team consisted of myself, Rich Heap, Ben Pritchard (cameraman), Laurent Derioz (cameraman) and Robin Earl who was to rig all the ropes for the camera work on the top 6 pitches.

The Team:-

Climbed for 10 days solid, on a selection of long routes such as Astroman, The Rostrum, and shorter routes like Alien and Hang Dog Flyer, all the time we struggled on the offwidth pitches of these routes! Nobody said it was going to be easy? It's really hot and Rich and I find it very hard to stay hydrated as we try to acclimatise to the exposure and conditions. The adventure nearly comes to an abrupt end thanks to a bladder infection, which lead to a few days in hospital, drugs and a week off.

Meanwhile Rich goes up the Eastern Ledges descent with Loz and Robin to toprope the crux headwall pitch. I contact them daily by radio and watch their progress through binoculars from the campsite - far easier option.

Rich comes back down to camp psyched I am feeling a lot better, so we put our flights back a week and together go and work the headwall pitches. Rich does really well; I do links but now have another setback thanks to swollen knuckle joints. At this point we decide to abandon the headwall due to a lack of time, injuries and not being good enough!

Anyway we now concentrate on doing Freerider (to fill in the gaps read Rich's diary on slackjaw website). Rich is stressed cos. of the film, worried we won't get a story, I'm stressed through other stuff but not to be perturbed we do Freerider in 90 degree heat, get benighted but have a good time.