Climbing an El Cap A4 in Under 14 Hours: Lunar Eclipse

Oliver Tippett and Taylor Martin go after the speed record on Lunar Eclipse, an A4 aid route on El Capitan with a reputation for wandering, awkward climbing and questionable fixed hardware. Neither of them had been on the route before, which is the whole complication: the record holder, Dave Allfrey, had. They miss the record by a couple of hours. Tippett is frank about why, including friends who had been hurt hitting ledges on this thing and the caution that knowledge buys you. It is a plain, first-person account of onsighting a hard aid line fast, shot by the people doing it, and it is more interesting for the honesty about the near miss than a clean send would have been.