A “Dolt Run” refers to climbing the first nine pitches of The Nose on El Capitan, up to Dolt Tower. From there, it’s possible to rappel with a single 70m rope. Many parties do a Dolt Run to gauge their speed and readiness for a Nose-in-a-Day (NIAD) attempt. Typically, a Dolt Run takes about 25% of the time it would take to complete a full NIAD ascent.
I had climbed The Nose twice before—once in
2017 over three days, and again in
2022 as a 19-hour NIAD. On that NIAD, my partner Nate Beckwith led the entire route while I jugged. Everything went smoothly and we maintained good energy throughout, finishing in a single sub-24-hour push. But my jugging and lower-out techniques weren’t well-honed, and I slowed us down. If I wanted to improve my time for a possible future attempt of the NIAD, a Dolt Run was in order. Nate Beckwith was down.
Also, this time, I’d be leading, and Nate would be jugging.
We timed our start so that we began Pitch 1 just as headlamps were no longer needed. I climbed mostly in a mix of free and French-free style. At each anchor, I pulled up about 40 feet of rope, fixed it, yelled down that the rope was fixed, and then short-fixed the beginning of the next pitch until Nate reached the anchor and put me on belay. Up to Sickle Ledge, for each short-fix segment I self-belayed with a GriGri, but after that I just accepted the “death loop” of slack in the fixed 40 feet. We used a 40-foot tag line for gear transfers—Nate would clip the cleaned gear to it, I’d haul it up, resupply, and keep going. I back-cleaned a bit to conserve gear and managed the follower pendulums along the way.
Less than an hour into the route, midway up Pitch 2, on normal belay and not short-fixing, I took the biggest whipper of my life when a cam popped out of a pin scar. The cam below ripped as well, and I was caught by a 0.2 C4. I ended up on my back, head-down. I don’t think I hit my head, but my helmet cracked in the back. I had thought the cam was bomber and had just back-cleaned the one below—it’s possible a trigger wire got pulled or snagged in the scar and dislodged it. My back was sore, and I had shimmering across my vision for the next two pitches—"retinal migraine" says Google, which can be caused by sudden stress—but I was determined to keep going.
Our total time was 4 hours and 40 minutes from when I started Pitch 1 to when Nate topped out on Dolt Tower. If my fall cost us about 10 minutes, that works out to roughly an 18-hour NIAD pace with me leading—not blazing fast, but respectable. Nate’s onsight NIAD time in 2010 is around 11.5 hours (reaching Dolt in under 3 hours), so he’s clearly the faster half of our team, whether I’m leading or jugging.
Huge thanks to Nate for joining me on this mission, catching my fall, and being one of the fastest, most competent followers I could ask for. It made me even more impressed by him leading the entire Nose when we did the NIAD back in October 2022.
This page includes an overlay, time stats, and pitch-by-pitch photos.
