10 year-old girl climbs El Capitan

A 10-year-old American girl may be the youngest person to have ascended El Capitan, a formidable and tricky vertical granite rock formation in California’s Yosemite National Park.

Selah joins the ranks of climbers who’ve been conquering El Cap’s’ Nose ascent since the first ascent in 1958.

According to the Guardian, climbing is in Selah’s blood; her father Mike Schneiter is a climbing guide, and El Capitan was the first climb he and Selah’s mother Joy completed together.

El Cap is quite a formidable climb, and most climbing fatalities (which total about 30 deaths since 1905) have occurred on the tall granite face. Selah and her dad took it easy, however, and were in no rush to summit or break any records. Father and daughter climbed and descended El Capitan over five days and didn’t set out too early. The pair slept in a portaledge, a tent-like stretcher secured and jutting out the side of the vertical rock face, a speck on the edge of the 914-metre peak, elevated about 2,300 metres above sea level.

‘If you have a big goal, it’s really hard to attack it all at once,’ said 10 year-old Selah. ‘You have to do it piece by piece. Take that big goal and make it into a bunch of small goals.’

The pioneering youngster’s only fears were that she’d ‘bail’ and not complete her climb, never mind the dizzying heights, but ‘You look up a lot more than you look down,’ she said.

Image: Pixabay

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