Wings of Steel 5.10+ A3+ R

Wings of Steel is a big-wall aid line on El Capitan's southwest face, graded 5.10+ A3+ A3 R at Grade VI, built around more than a thousand feet of blank, compact granite on the King Slab section. Where most El Cap routes rely on roughly 15 hook moves, this one strings together more than 100, on holds so marginal that the first ascent party's ability to climb it at all was doubted for years. It is remembered less for a clean style of climbing than for the ethics fight its first ascent set off in Yosemite.

History

Richard Jensen and Mark Smith made the first ascent over 39 days in 1982, using tiny Leeper hook placements on a face many local climbers assumed had to have been drilled or chipped to be climbable. Because Jensen and Smith weren't part of the established Yosemite scene and placed a large number of bolts, the ascent drew accusations of cheating that escalated into death threats, physical assaults, sabotaged gear and a slander campaign that split the climbing community for decades; one critic later admitted to chopping bolts off the route. It went unrepeated for nearly 30 years until Ammon McNeely and Kait Barber completed the second ascent in the summer of 2011, also over 39 days, during which McNeely took more than 500 feet of falls combined and dislocated a shoulder.

On film

Assault on El Capitan follows Ammon McNeely's 2011 second ascent of Wings of Steel and lays out the controversy behind the route, interviewing both the original first ascent team and the Yosemite locals who accused them of drilling their way up the wall. The film uses that history to frame McNeely's climb as an attempt to finally settle, through repetition, what the route's first ascent could not.