Tomorrow the climbing team Craig Muderlak, Gary Dunn, Christian Catell and I will embark on my first El Capitan route named Zodiac. We will be in the El Cap Meadow at 6 am and meet the carry team to head into the base. The team has been working hard all day fixing ropes on the first 3 pitches and carrying in the majority of our stuff other than food and personal things to the base. If you think doing 3000 pull ups is hard, I would argue that they have it much harder. They have to haul 350 lbs of gear and food and water up the entire face. Granted it will get lighter as we go because we will be consuming a lot of it but they also have to set all the ropes for me and Gary and haul the portaledges and other things too. They are a pretty amazing group of guys and its awesome to have them in my life and helping me out.
I made it to the valley on Saturday and it has been a pretty surreal experience so far.This really is my favorite place on earth other than home. I have met up with a lot of old friends and even made some new ones. One person in particular that I met was with her husband in the same campground as us the first night. They strolled into our camp and a few feet away said ” Are you Enock?” and of course I said “Yes” with a questioning tone. I had never met them before and they had Italian accents. They explained that Elenora the lady in the wheelchair had been hurt rock climbing about a year ago and she had been talking to my friends Timmy and Sean O’ Neill and had seen my story online. They are also here to climb Zodiac and were going to start the same day as we were. We decided to move our start day up one day to avoid having 8 people all trying to climb in the same area.
I also met Hans Florine today at El Cap Bridge. He is a very famous climber that has climbed the Nose of El Cap over 100 times. You should look him up. I also saw Alex Honnold and Sasha Dagulian. Also very famous climbers but they were trying to be incognito so I left them alone. I have seen many friends from last year and that has been very cool. It is like a family reunion. I even have seen some of the, once strangers but now friends, who carried me last year to the base and off the climb afterward.
I want to thank all the amazing people in my life and the ones I don’t know for helping make this possible. I want you all to know I am very grateful for all the things you have done from donating to moral support. I want to make a special thank you to Sandy Martin, my girlfriend. Without Sandy keeping things together at home and giving me the support to do this none of this is possible. She would say she hasn’t done much but she has done a ton and I really am grateful to have her in my life.
I also want to thank The North Face for the awesome clothes and for helping to support the movie.
I will try to update people on Facebook but if not I will try to text Sandy and she can do it for me. Thank you all again and I can’t wait to tell you more in 5 days.
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