The Race for the Nose of El Capitan - Fastest time up El Capitan

Over half a century ago, the nose was first climbed by Warren Harding in a colossal siege that lasted nine months. Two years later, Royal Robins climbed the same route in only six days. Then, in 1975, a team led by Jim Bridwell left the bivouac year behind and scaled the entire nose in a single day. But the race for the nose really found its stride in the lycra-clad 90s when Hans Florin got in on the game. I'm Hans Florin. I'm known for having the speed record on the nose of El Capitan. Hans came out as an all-American pole vaulter. He has a real competitive sight, you know. Hans was really pursuing the speed climbing competition. Comes up to me and he's like, you want to go break the record on the nose with me? And I'm like, yeah, sure. You say you're the fastest climber in the world, let's go do it, you know. Let's see you back it up. I wasn't ready for Hans' entourage that he brought with him. How are you guys feeling this morning? We are feeling good. We are feeling bad. We are feeling fast. Real fast. You know, we pulled off an 8.11 time without really trying that hard even. Over the next year, Hans cued up a string of Yosemite hard men to help him bring the nose record down, including the legendary Peter Croft. For me, it was like, if I can do that fast, then I've got the whole afternoon for you to do something else. Whereas for Hans, the record was everything. Peter and Hans set the exceptionally proud time of four hours and 22 minutes, which stood for over a decade until Dean Potter entered the scene. You know, when I first came to the valley, as with most young climbers, I just wanted to prove myself. Climbing these walls as fast as humanly possible was the way I saw that I could do that. With Dean up there, something was happening that I wasn't a part of, and I wanted to be a part of it. Me and Timmy O'Neill, we did a few climbs together. All of a sudden, we were like, let's go for the nose. The Potter-O'Neill team raced up the nose and took it under four hours, toppling Hans' decade-long reign. I was itchy. I thought it'd be fun to try to break their record back. Ten years it took for somebody to break that record, and in less than 10 days, Hans comes and breaks it again. The guy was merciless. Hans thrives on competition. So the Dean are like, okay, cool. It's on. We'll answer back. So then we went back. Like two days after that, Dean's back up there with Timmy, smashing the record again with their three hours and 24 minutes. Pretty like, slap, slap, look, we can beat you by 30 minutes. It was pretty cool. And then Hans is just like, no, I'm taking it back. Dean and Hans, they bring out this weird competitive side in each other. I remember Dean saying, you know, he was competitive with Hans, but he didn't want to be competitive. And, you know, it's just, everybody has those feelings, I guess. The competition of speed climbing hasn't made me feel good. I love the action of speed climbing, but then trying to beat somebody else, that's not what I do. There's a perception by people out there that there was friction between me and Dean, which, you know, there was. You take an already tense situation, speed climbing, and then you add the focus of the media. Unbelievable, Hans. Welcome to Conversations. You've got to be kidding me. And it just becomes too much. With Hans, it was like this little dog humping my leg, and I hated the fact that it brought out the little dog in me. Dean comes from a background of climbing very soulfully. Competition like that, I haven't found a healthy place for it. I think Hans has. Yeah, competition, I believe, is super healthy. As much as people like climbers aren't competitive, they're competing with the rock or with themselves. It's a bunch of ****, you know. You know, it is the way humans are, that we want to one-up each other, we want to stand on top or be number one. But I started climbing to remove myself from that at a certain point. I just pulled back, and I was like, nope, speed climbing's not for me.