When I was 10 years old, my most impressive athletic feat was playing basketball during recess with the bottoms of my zip-off pants bagged around my ankles and not tripping all over them that often. Colorado resident Selah Schneiter has me pretty soundly beat, as this week she became the youngest person in recorded Yosemite history to climb El Capitan’s iconic Nose route.
Schneiter topped out on Wednesday evening after a five-day push up the 3,000-foot wall along with her father Mike—a climbing guide—and his friend Mark Regier. The Nose is a 31-pitch beast rated as a 5.13 or 5.9 C2 VI. It’s the most famous line on El Cap and possibly the single most famous route in the world. “I was scared just sometimes,” Schneiter told Outside magazine. “I thought it was really fun.” She even got to lead two pitches, including a traverse up to the Boot Flake, a big flake of granite that looks like a boot.
Scott Cory climbed the Nose twice in 2001 when he was 11 years old, and Tori Allen also topped it in 2001 when she was 13. Schneiter has been around climbing essentially since she was born, and she climbed Colorado’s Independence Monument on her seventh birthday. She might not have the record for too long, as her three younger siblings are both also very early starters. Schneiter’s mother Joy told Outside that seven-year-old brother Zeke wants to do the Nose next year. Surely Selah will be gunning for Alex Honnold’s Nose speed record by then.
[Outside]