You could say Hans Florine knows his way up El Capitan. He’s completed the 3,000-feet of vertical rock 100 times.
Last month he led two climbers who had never scaled the rock before on their first ascent of the “nose route” while Florine, aged 51, marked his 100th ascent.
“El Capitan is both the most beautiful rock and has the best routes of any rock in the world,” Florine said, according to a press release. “I chose to do the 100th ascent of the Nose Route with two people who had never done it before. There is a crazy excitement and joy in being on a big wall for the first time and seeing it through their eyes.”
Of all the things to do 100 times. Hans Florine has scaled the most treacherous route on the world’s most treacherous rock climbing walls. And it’s not just an afternoon jaunt either. Typically the climb takes three days as it did in September, though Florine holds a mutal speed record with Alex Honnold from 2012 with a time of 2 hours, 23 minutes.
Why he chose to scale El Capitan so many times will be explained in great detail in an upcoming book On the Nose: A Lifelong Obsession with Yosemite’s Most Iconic Big Wall Climb to be published by Falcon in 2016. Florine first scaled the rock in 1989. He currently manages the Diablo Rock Gym in Concord, California.
