El Capitan and its related environs constitute the ‘holiest of holies,’ the ‘center of the universe,’ or the ‘mecca’ of the rock climbing world. Big walls are simply the tallest, steepest, and most ...challenging rockfaces on the planet. For the tribe of big wall climbers, El Capitan, which stands nearly 1000 meters above the Merced River in Yosemite National Park in California, has a mystique and allure unmatched by any other location. In previous work, I establish the concept of climbing on El Capitan as ‘vertical pilgrimage’ (Shultz, 2020), and in this paper, I focus specifically on climbing efforts as pilgrimage asceticism. The research presented here is part of a larger effort focused on contemporary serial climbers on El Capitan, individuals who structure their entire lives around the cliff, and who return to the challenge again and again. The methods employed are generally ethnographic with elements of auto-ethnography. I consider whether two seminal theories of asceticism, Harpham (1992) and Valantasis (2008), survive out-of-sample testing with specific data from serial El Capitan climbers. To construct the analysis, I first, carefully consider the basic character of key movements of the pilgrimage from start to finish, including elements that are particularly austere in nature. Secondly, I consider, in detail, the language and interpretations of the El Capitan pilgrimage employed by four well-known ascensionists. Specific use of the term epic, which is ubiquitous in climbing discourse, is shown to hold significant meaning with respect to big wall asceticism. I conclude that these theories not only pass this out-of-sample test but can be shown to have significant descriptive utility with data related to these climbers. In particular, the ideas of Harpham and Valantasis potently describe how the culture of this famous rock arises from ascetic endeavors. Overall, this work demonstrates the tremendous potential of using an ascetical lens for analysis in the budding field of pilgrimage studies.
The calc-alkaline granitoids of the central Sierra Nevada batholith are associated with abundant mafic rocks. These include both country-rock xenoliths and mafic magmatic enclaves (MME) that commonly ...have fine-grained and, less commonly, cumulate textures. Scarce composite enclaves consist of either xenoliths enclosed in MME, or of MME enclosed in other MME with different grain size and texture. Enclaves are often enclosed in mafic aggregates and form meter-size polygenic swarms, mostly in the margins of normally zoned plutons. Enclaves may locally divert schlieren layering. Mafic dikes, which also occur in swarms, are undisturbed, composite, or largely hybridized. In central Sierra Nevada, with the exception of xenoliths that completely differ from the other rocks, host granitoids, mafic aggregates, MME, and some composite dikes exhibit a bulk compositional diversity and, at the same time, important mineralogical and geochemical (including isotopic) similarities. MME and host granitoids display distinct major and trace element compositions. However, strong correlations between MME–host granitoid pairs indicate interactions and parallel evolution of MME and enclosing granitoid in each pluton. Identical mafic mineral compositions and isotopic features are the result of these interactions and parallel evolution. Mafic dikes have broadly the same major and trace element compositions as the MME although variations are large between the different dikes that are at distinctly different stages of hybridization and digestion by the host granitoids. The composition of the granitoids and various mafic rocks reflects three distinct stages of hybridization that occurred, respectively, at depth, during ascent and emplacement, and after emplacement. The occurrence and succession of hybridization processes were tightly controlled by the physical properties of the magmas. The sequential thorough or partial mixing and mingling were commonly followed by differentiation and segregation processes. Unusual MME that contain abundant large crystals of hornblende resulted from disruption of early cumulates at depth, whereas those richer in large crystals of biotite were formed by disruption of late mafic aggregates or schlieren layerings at the level of emplacement. MME and host granitoids are considered cogenetic, because both are hybrid rocks that were produced by the mixing of the same two components in different proportions. The felsic component was produced by partial melting of preexisting crustal materials, whereas the dominant mafic component was probably derived from the upper mantle. However, in the lack of a clear mantle signature, the origin of the mafic component remains questionable.
This study highlights a geology of Yosemite Valley virtual field trip (VFT)
and the companion exercises produced as a four-part educational activity to
substitute physical field experiences. The VFT ...is created as an Earth
project in Google Earth Web, a versatile format that allows access through a web browser or Google Earth application with the sharing of an internet address. Many dynamic resources can be used for VFT stops through use of the Google Earth Engine (global satellite imagery draped on topography, 360∘ street-level imagery, and user-submitted 360∘ photospheres). Images, figures, videos, and narration can be embedded into VFT stops. Hyperlinks allow for a wide range of external resources to be incorporated; optional background resources help reduce the knowledge gap between the general public and advanced undergraduate students, ensuring that VFTs can be broadly accessible. Like many in-person field trips, there is a script with learning goals for each stop, but also an opportunity to learn through exploration, as the viewer can dynamically change their vantage at each stop (i.e., guided-discovery learning). This interactive VFT format supports students' spatial skills and encourages attention to be focused on a stop's critical spatial information. The progression from VFT and mapping exercises to geologically reasoned decision-making results in high-quality student work; students find it engaging, enjoyable, and educational.
On the Nose Florine, Hans; Moye, Jayme
2016., 2016, 2016-09-01
eBook
The Nose is the most famous rock climb on earth, tracing the 3,000-foot prow of the granite formation known as El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. Climbers didn't figure out how to scale it until ...1958-- five years after Everest. In 1989, a young climber named Hans Florine attempted to ascend the Nose, an effort that took him 46 hours. He would go on to climb it an unprecedented 101 times (and counting) and whittle his total effort down to a mere 2.5 hours--a feat that has no parallel in modern outdoor sport. Florine's story is at once an audacious adventure that spans nearly three decades, providing a rare look inside the adrenaline-charged world of big-wall climbing in Yosemite Valley, and a testament to the power of persistence.
Large rock slope failures from near‐vertical cliffs are an important geomorphic process driving the evolution of mountainous landscapes, particularly glacially steepened cliffs. The morphology and ...age of a 2·19 × 106 m3 rock avalanche deposit beneath El Capitan in Yosemite Valley indicates a massive prehistoric failure of a large expanse of the southeast face. Geologic mapping of the deposit and the cliff face constrains the rock avalanche source to an area near the summit of ∼8·5 × 104 m2. The rock mass free fell ∼650 m, reaching a maximum velocity of 100 m s−1, impacted the talus slope and spread across the valley floor, extending 670 m from the base of the cliff. Cosmogenic beryllium‐10 exposure ages from boulders in the deposit yield a mean age of 3·6 ± 0·2 ka. The ∼13 kyr time lag between deglaciation and failure suggests that the rock avalanche did not occur as a direct result of glacial debuttressing. The ∼3·6 ka age for the rock avalanche does coincide with estimated late Holocene rupture of the Owens Valley fault and/or White Mountain fault between 3·3 and 3·8 ka. The coincidence of ages, combined with the fact that the most recent (AD 1872) Owens Valley fault rupture triggered numerous large rock falls in Yosemite Valley, suggest that a large magnitude earthquake (≥M7.0) centered in the south‐eastern Sierra Nevada may have triggered the rock avalanche. If correct, the extreme hazard posed by rock avalanches in Yosemite Valley remains present and depends on local earthquake recurrence intervals. Published in 2010 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Partial melting of mafic intrusions recently emplaced into the lower crust can produce voluminous silicic magmas with isotopic ratios similar to their mafic sources. Low-temperature (825 and 850 ...degrees C) partial melts synthesized at 700 MPa in biotite-hornblende gabbros from the central Sierra Nevada batholith (Sisson et al. in Contrib Mineral Petrol 148:635-661, 2005) have major-element and modeled trace-element (REE, Rb, Ba, Sr, Th, U) compositions matching those of the Cretaceous El Capitan Granite, a prominent granite and silicic granodiorite pluton in the central part of the Sierra Nevada batholith (Yosemite, CA, USA) locally mingled with coeval, isotopically similar quartz diorite through gabbro intrusions (Ratajeski et al. in Geol Soc Am Bull 113:1486-1502, 2001). These results are evidence that the El Capitan Granite, and perhaps similar intrusions in the Sierra Nevada batholith with lithospheric-mantle-like isotopic values, were extracted from LILE-enriched, hydrous (hornblende-bearing) gabbroic rocks in the Sierran lower crust. Granitic partial melts derived by this process may also be silicic end members for mixing events leading to large-volume intermediate composition Sierran plutons such as the Cretaceous Lamarck Granodiorite. Voluminous gabbroic residues of partial melting may be lost to the mantle by their conversion to garnet-pyroxene assemblages during batholithic magmatic crustal thickening.PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
Outcrops of leucitite lavas occur as scattered remnants up to 40 m thick in the El Capitan area, northeast of Cobar in western New South Wales. Two eruption sites have been located for these lavas. ...Preserved volcanic features indicate that the lavas were erupted on to a relatively low-relief, Early Miocene land surface, flowed along a shallow valley and underwent inflation. Geochemical analyses of the leucitites indicate only limited fractionation. Remnant outcrops of the leucitite lavas represent a very important time marker in the geomorphic history of the Cobar region, preserving evidence of both Early Miocene and post-Early Miocene landscape evolution and weathering conditions. A deep-weathering profile, similar to those common throughout the region and characterised by a ferruginous mottled zone and underlying bleached saprolite, is preserved beneath a dissected flow at one eruption site. Other deposits beneath the leucitite flows include baked soils, silcretes, and quartz-rich gravels and grits. Palaeomagnetic dating of the upper part of the deep-weathering profile indicates an Early to Middle Miocene age for hematite fixation. A new
40
Ar/
39
Ar age on the volcanic plug at this site (17.14 ± 0.20 Ma, 2σ) refines the minimum eruption age for the leucitites and supports an Early Miocene age for ferruginisation of the deep-weathering profile. Topographic inversion of the basal contact of one of the leucitite flows indicates an average minimium erosion rate for the area of 1 m per million years. Weathering profiles on the leucitites are thin and lack significant ferruginisation or chemical leaching, indicating that post-Early Miocene weathering in the region has been very limited. These profiles also contain a significant aeolian component including abundant quartz dust.
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