How Sasha DiGiulian Overcame a 9-Day Snowstorm and 10 Bloody Fingers to Send El Cap’s Longest Free Route

Published December 4, 2025 11:13AM

I. Bail or commit

Sasha DiGiulian crouched in a lime-green portaledge as rain pummeled the plastic flaps around her. She hung in a tent 2,600 feet above the ground, seven pitches from the top of El Capitan in Yosemite, and 11 days into the most challenging climb of her life.

After working toward this route for years, she’d sent 32 of the 39 pitches from the ground up so far, including two of three cruxes. The final, 5.13d crux pitch still waited above, as well as two other 5.13s that were certainly soaked. What’s worse, she was running out of food. And she couldn’t descend in the storm.

In between switching to airplane mode to preserve her depleting battery, she checked the forecast: rain, snow, and punishing wind for the next seven days—except for one half-day window.

In two days, there would be a few hours of clear weather. DiGiulian and her climbing partner, Elliot Faber, could use this to bail and get down safely. But they could also stay put and let two of her friends on the ground resupply them with more food and water—hopefully, enough to last until another, longer weather window.

As DiGiulian reflected, the skies outside roared. Her portaledge poles bent inwards over her head, threatening to snap. She pushed down her alarm, turning over the broader decision in her mind. Bail or commit?

DiGiulian works delicate slab moves on the Platinum Wall. (Photo: Pablo Durana / Red Bull Content Pool)

II. “It always felt bigger than me”

At age 18, former World Cup competitor DiGiulian became famous as the first North American woman to send 5.14d sport. At 33, she has evolved into one of climbing’s most influential figures. In the past four years, she’s rebounded from a series of hip surgeries into big wall tear, ticking Logical Progression (5.13; 2,800ft) in Mexico, Rayu (5.14b; 1900ft) in Spain, and earlier this year, Bravo Les Filles (5.13d; 2,000ft) in Madagascar. In the last two years, she’s also founded a protein bar company, published a memoir, and starred in a feature documentary on HBO.

Despite her big wall resumé, DiGiulian had not yet freed El Cap. In 2022, she went to Yosemite Valley to try Pineapple Express (5.13c; 2500ft), the all-free variation to El Cap’s North America Wall now chronicled in Amity Warme’s Ground Up documentary. After seeing five teams on the route, DiGiulian abandoned the attempt. “I didn’t want to be in a queue on the wall,” she told Climbing. Plus, there was something else that intrigued her: a new, 5.13d route called The Direct Line, a 39-pitch route bolted from 2013-2016 by Rob “Platinum” Miller and Elliot Faber. In 2017, Miller and Roby Rudolf freed it over 14 days, and it had seen only one repeat since. Even though The Direct Line rose between El Cap’s two most popular climbs, the Nose and the Salathé, it was relatively unknown. It certainly wouldn’t be crowded.

When DiGiulian left Pineapple Express to check out The Direct Line—also called Platinum Wall, after Miller’s nickname—she was blown away by the quality of the granite slab. “This is just stunning, beautiful rock climbing,” she remembered thinking. The guidebook promised an enormous quest: six 5.13 pitches and an astonishing 24 5.12 pitches, with only two pitches easier than 5.11 on the entire route. (By comparison, the free Nose has two 5.13-5.14 cruxes and 15 pitches under 5.11.)

Technically, Platinum Wall is El Cap’s longest free route because of its five traversing pitches and two downclimbs. Its pitch lengths sum to 4,470 feet, according to the numbers in Yosemite Big Walls by Eric Sloan. Miller originally envisioned it as a more direct link from the ground to Triple Direct Ledge, but thanks to the wandery pitches from pitch 12 to 20 and 35 to 38, it’s ironically the least direct free route on El Cap.

Scattered across wandering terrain, Platinum’s 5.13 cruxes would be impossible to fully rehearse. If DiGiulian decided to go for it, Platinum would be the tallest, longest free climb she’d ever attempted in her 20-year career.

“It was one of those goals that always felt bigger than me,” admitted DiGiulian. “It was hard to even say out loud.”

III. The three cruxes

At first, her pursuit of El Cap’s longest route was a “slow burn.” By fall 2024, however, she was putting the puzzle pieces into place.

Of the six 5.13 pitches on the route, DiGiulian narrowed her focus to three cruxes: the White Wizard (pitch 18), the Doghead (pitch 27), and the unnamed pitch 34.

The White Wizard consists of a 195-foot sequence ending in “opposing gaston sloper crimps”—a hold description as heinous as it sounds.

The Doghead entails a 140-foot, mega-exposed section that required traversing left on underclings and smearing feet against a blank wall.

Lastly, pitch 34, which DiGiulian called “the sportiest” of the three and the true crux, involves a stem corner that leads to a thin crack and ends with a V7-V8 boulder problem.

“The Doghead was the most epic pitch of my life,” says DiGiulian. “It’s really, really exposed. You’re just smearing your feet against a blank wall.” (Photo: Pablo Durana / Red Bull Content Pool)

Between rehearsing the beginning and final pitches, DiGiulian explored the Valley to dial her moves on Yosemite granite. Sending Book of Hate (5.13d) on Yosemite’s Elephant Rock is a capstone achievement for many; for DiGiulian, it was just practice for the pitch 33 stem corner on Platinum.

In November 2024, she freed pitch 34, the hardest moves she anticipated on the extensive route. “I probably tried 25 percent of [the route],” she said. “Then I was like, let’s go see what’s up.”

IV. Go time

Spring isn’t the best time to climb hard on El Cap. The Merced River floods Yosemite campgrounds. Mosquitos attack in swarms at the base. Most importantly for DiGiulian, water seeps from the Teahupoo roof—a 160-foot, 5.13a traverse and slippery downclimb on pitch 37 of Platinum.

In spring 2025, she returned to the Valley anyway. By then, she’d recruited Faber, one of the original developers, to be her partner. She knew he had “unfinished business” with the route he’d spent three years bolting. Wary of the weather, DiGiulian and Faber agreed to approach the route with “low expectations.” They practiced what they could on the wall, then planned to come back in fall.

“We had a lot of fun,” said DiGiulian. Now that she had a partner, she set her mind to attempting a redpoint in October or November. In the meantime, she’d go to Madagascar’s Tsaranoro Valley to try an unfinished Lynn Hill route, Bravo Les Filles (5.13d; 2,000ft). “It’s another climb that was my buildup to something bigger,” she said, “which is Platinum.”

Finally, on October 8, DiGiulian arrived back in Yosemite, fresh from summer travel and ready to send hard. In Madagascar, she’d navigated no-fall terrain and carefully avoided a 200-foot whipper on the last pitch of Bravo Les Filles. Then she’d spent September climbing tufas in France’s Verdon Gorge—a light palette cleanser from granite slab.

Even though she’d sent Platinum’s crux the year before, she was nervous. Send Bars was having a busy work season, and DiGiulian would have to take at least two weeks off. “I just wanted to wrap everything up so the company could be in a good place, and I could go off and be on the wall,” she said.

She and Faber, who would also try to free the route, mimicked the tactics of Miller and Rudolf, stashing water and food at Triple Direct Ledge (pitch 22) and Gold Ledge (pitch 31) to reduce their hauling load. They planned for 15-16 days, twice as long as DiGiulian had ever spent in a portaledge before.

IV. A knife fight

When DiGiulian first pulled onto the route, she was surprised by how well she was navigating the slabs. “I was just really shocked that I was feeling so good climbing because leading up to it, I didn’t feel ready,” she said. “Each pitch was kind of a knife fight.”

Remember those opposing gaston sloper crimps? When DiGiulian encountered them at the top of the White Wizard (pitch 18), to her surprise, she couldn’t hold them. After several days of 5.12-5.13 slab, her fingers were bleeding too much.

She fell once, then went for a second attempt. Faced with the prospect of falling from the gaston sloper crimps again—and restarting the 195-foot pitch—she downclimbed two moves and improvised a new sequence.

“I was shocked that it worked,” she said. At that pitch, Faber decided to switch into full support mode, committed to seeing DiGiulian through to the end.

By the time they reached the Doghead (pitch 27), Alex Honnold and Tommy Caldwell, who were also attempting The Direct Line, caught up with them. They passed DiGiulian and Faber, exchanging friendly hellos. “They ticked [the Doghead] up really nicely, which was generous,” said DiGiulian. On prior working burns, Honnold had advised her to punch out left for a sloper at the end of the underclings.

Caldwell later confirmed with Climbing that he and Honnold sent Platinum Wall in a six-day push, completing the third ascent on November 11. “It was a very modern route with hundreds of bolts,” Caldwell wrote over email. “The climbing was great. I think this one is probably destined to become popular.”

DiGiulian calls Platinum Wall “a really modern El Cap route” that’s well-protected and sporty. (Photo: Pablo Durana / Red Bull Content Pool)

VI. Trapped

By November 14, day 11 on the wall, DiGiulian and Faber found themselves hiding from pelting rain in their respective portaledges. They’d reached Gold Ledge at the top of pitch 31 (32, if you count Pine Line as pitch 1), and still had seven pitches to go—including the crux.

“I knew the headwall was going to get soaked,” said DiGiulian. “[The forecast] just kept getting worse and worse.” She added that she was really jealous of Caldwell and Honnold for climbing fast enough to escape the storm.

As DiGiulian and Faber’s one weather window approached, they finally made a choice. “We could have gone down or stayed,” she said, “and we chose to stay.” Two fellow Yosemite climbers, Ryan Sheridan and Clayton Koob, stepped up to resupply the team. As soon as they did, temperatures dropped, and snow started piling up on DiGiulian’s tent. The storm had begun again.

VII. A little extra test

It would be another five days before DiGiulian stepped out of her portaledge to meet the sun and start climbing. Pitch 33, a 5.13a named Platinum, was a layback corner with a finger crack that was now soaking wet. Rather than waiting for it to dry, she pre-placed a few pieces where it was particularly wet and fired the pitch from the start. Finally, the moment of truth was here: pitch 34, the true crux.

Nine days of crouching in a damp tent had failed to heal DiGiulian’s fingers from the 32 pitches prior. She described the crux as feeling “insane.” The first three tries were failures. “I was bleeding on every finger. I was like, I’m going to create a little shield on these open wounds and accept the pain and punch through it,” she said. DiGiulian applied superglue to her raw tips, then sent the bouldery crux on her fourth attempt.

At the chains, she felt a wave of happiness, but immediately suppressed it. “You’re so happy to do the crux, and then you’re like, I have this hard pitch,” she said. But above, loomed another 5.12 slab—the Hanging Slab, which felt like spitting off the edge of El Cap. The last 5.13 awaited just after that: the wild, 165-foot Teahupoo roof traverse. Then just one 5.12 and one 5.11 to the summit. But Teahupoo felt far from guaranteed.

Before the last three pitches, Faber got called away for a family emergency, and jugged out. Sheridan stepped up to belay DiGiulian. As she traversed the Muir roof, the irony dawned on her: This pitch was the reason she avoided the route in the spring. Now, she was doing it wet.

“I always like to think things happen for a reason,” she said, “and I was dealt this storm to learn more about what I was capable of, as a little extra test of my resilience.”

When she clipped the anchor of Teahupoo, she cried. “It was such an emotional experience. There was no moment on the route when I allowed myself to fully celebrate because there was always going to be another pitch that was going to require my full effort,” she said. There was still the last 5.12 and 5.11, but she knew she could send them.

At the summit, DiGiulian looked up and saw both her husband, Erik Osterholm, and Koob, her friend who had resupplied her mid-storm. She took a step onto the ground.

Then she started laughing.

“I was like, oh my gosh, I haven’t walked in 23 days. I’m standing,” she said. “I just laughed at the odyssey of the climb, and the journey, and how in it we were. What an adventure we had.”

That night, to celebrate, DiGiulian’s brother drove up from Los Angeles and cooked an enormous turkey for everyone who had supported her. It was the day before Thanksgiving.

VII. Back to reality

Four days later, DiGiulian arrived back home in Boulder, Colorado at 2 a.m. Her dog, Moosechaga, was so excited to see her that he did three back flips—and promptly puked on the floor. She called it a “‘back to reality” moment.

After 23 days on El Cap, DiGiulian officially made the fourth ascent and first female ascent of Platinum Wall. Now, she’s returned to her routine: long hikes with her dog, spending time with family, and catching up on work with Send Bars, where she’s preparing to launch a new bar in January.

In terms of climbing, she’s in her best shape ever, but is still forcing herself to rest—and do some written reflection of the odyssey she’d been through. “I’ve got a lot of processing to do,” she said. “The storm would have been a great time to reflect, but I was so cold and just managing to survive up there.” For now, she’ll enjoy climbing around Boulder, where winter promises plenty of sunny days.