EDITION 01 - MARCH 11, 2025
Welcome to the first edition of the Yosemite Climbing Association’s new eNewsletter—your window into the stories, history, and ongoing work to preserve Yosemite’s climbing legacy.
Chris Van Leuven and Zach Milligan on Moratorium
A Note from the Editor
I’m Chris Van Leuven, a longtime climber, founder of Yosemite E-Ebiking in Mariposa, journalist, and editor for this project.
For this kickoff, we’re starting with a feature on YCA founder Ken Yager, exploring his lifelong love for Yosemite, his commitment to preserving climbing history, and how this newsletter will serve as a hub for storytelling.
Next week's piece is an interview with Rick Accomazzo, whose new award-winning book Tobin, the Stonemasters, and Me brings fresh attention to Tobin Sorenson’s groundbreaking Yosemite climbs in the late 1970s—a time when Tobin was widely considered the best all-around climber in the world.
After that, we spotlight Dierdre Wolownick, who released Success in 7 Steps in mid-February 2025. This practical guide to achieving your biggest goals draws directly from Dierdre’s life—including her historic climb of Lurking Fear at age 66, when she became the oldest woman to climb El Cap. As a multilingual author, orchestra conductor, marathon runner, and mother of Alex Honnold, Dierdre inspires people to get things done, and she wrote this book for anyone who aims to succeed with their goals.
Through this newsletter, we hope to connect past, present, and future climbers to the stories that shaped and continue to shape Yosemite’s climbing culture. Thanks for reading and for being part of the YCA community!
Chris Van Leuven
Editor, Yosemite Climbing Association News Brief
YosemiteClimbing.Org
Ken Yager: The Founder of YCA
“Climbing history is world history — and this newsletter helps us keep that story alive”
“Our mission is to protect and promote Yosemite climbing, and a newsletter is the perfect way to do that — to give back to the climbers who are thirsting for these stories,” says YCA and Facelift founder Ken Yager.
Yager lives just down the street from the YCA headquarters and museum, and his home mirrors the museum itself, located at 5180 CA-140 in Mariposa (its sister exhibit is in Yosemite Valley). His walls showcase iconic images from legendary climbers and photographers Glen Denny and Tom Frost and fine artwork by Yosemite artist Penny Otwell. Climbing history is interwoven into every corner, with historic items mingled with personal mementos. Since he was 12—he’s now at 66—climbing has been the centerpiece of his life.
At 16, the day after Ken got his driver’s license, after climbing at Lover’s Leap and before getting on Highway 50 and on the way home, he spotted a “scary” figure on the roadside with his thumb out. Yager still doesn’t know why he pulled over. “My parents told me not to pick up hitchhikers,” he recalls, but he’s glad he did. That hitchhiker was his hero, Warren Harding, who made the first ascent of the Nose on El Cap in 1958. Harding handed Yager $20 for gas and invited him to dinner at his mother’s house in West Sacramento. They later climbed together and had a lifelong friendship. Years later, when Harding visited Yosemite, he’d stay at Ken’s house.
At 17, Yager moved to Yosemite and quickly started ticking off ascents with Mike Corbett (co-founder of YCA), climbing El Capitan four times that first year. This was before modern gear, and if you couldn’t get protection in—especially for wide cracks since camming units didn’t exist—you either ran it out or got creative, stacking pitons, hexes, and nuts. Back then, rescues were rare and considered impossible on the southeast face of El Cap, and being up there made you feel alone, “like being on the moon,” Yager recalls. “It was generally understood that you couldn’t be rescued on that side of El Cap, and that made it committing.” That risk came with close calls and even closer friendships—bonds that span his lifetime. Over the years, he’s risked taking 100-foot falls, and once, while climbing the South Face of Half Dome, rocks fell from above, nearly striking him and his partner, Dave Schultz. “We were cowering,” Ken says, “we thought we were toast.” He still remembers the shadow from the rocks blocking the sun from his back and the airplane-like whoosh as the blocks missed them by inches.
During his time in Yosemite Valley, Yager spent 12 years working as a mountain guide for the Yosemite Mountaineering School, bringing clients up El Capitan three to four times a year, including ascents of the Nose. He reckons he guided El Cap 50 times over those years. Those trips gave his guests memories that last a lifetime due to pushing themselves beyond their limits while bathed in the beauty of El Cap.
Other notable climbers Ken connected with include Jim Bridwell, and the two worked together on rigging and filming Lynn Hill after she made the first free ascent of the Nose in 1993. He knew Golden Age climbers Royal Robbins and Tom Frost and modern legend Dean Potter. Additionally, Ken believes he’s one of the few climbers alive today who’s conversed with 1930s-era climbers, including Jules Eichorn, Richard Leonard, and Marjory Bridge Farquhar. With Potter, Ken made his first one-day ascent of the Nose. They completed it in 9 and a half hours, with Ken laughing, saying, “I remember slowing Dean down by about five hours.” It was Dean’s first El Cap training run of the season, and it wore him down. Ken jumared as fast as he could to keep up, and the two, totally gassed, took a breather on Camp 6. Before the climb, Dean had heckled Ken for bringing a full Camelback, but now—out of water—he asked for a sip off Ken’s straw. Ken also handed Dean a Clif Bar that he’d stashed in his pocket to help boost his energy. They spent an hour on Camp 6 chatting and taking in the views in the afternoon sun.
Says Ken, “There are other sports with some similarities to climbing—like surfing, where waves connect people—but waves change every time. In climbing, the rock might change a little, the conditions shift, but we’re all pulling on the same holds.”
Those are the same holds Harding used on the Nose in 1958, the same ones Potter and Timmy O’Neill grabbed when they set the speed record in 2001 when they broke the four-hour mark, and the same ones Tommy Caldwell and Alex Honnold used when they broke the two-hour mark. “We’re solving the same problems. That’s rare in sports,” Ken adds.
Fast forward to the early ’90s. “El Portal, 1991. It’s hard to believe it’s been over 30 years since Mike Corbett and I pooled our old climbing gear together and called ourselves the Yosemite Climbing Archives,” Ken wrote in the 20th Anniversary YCA/Facelift zine. (In 1999, the Yosemite Climbing Archives was renamed and formalized into the Yosemite Climbing Association, becoming a non-profit in 2003.) “We wanted to show the evolution of Yosemite rock climbing, and the tragic passing of John Salathé that same year brought his gear into our collection, thanks to his old climbing partners. Our first exhibit was in February 1992 at the Cedar Lodge.”
Facelift, a child of YCA, came next, born out of Yager’s frustration with stepping over used toilet paper while guiding clients. This human waste left a lasting (and unpleasant) impression on Ken and his guests. Seeing these small signs of a bigger problem, he decided to act. He gathered a group at Camp 4, and soon dozens of volunteers joined him, collecting trash left behind by others, bagging it up, and hauling it to the dumpsters. Over the years, his efforts have resulted in more than one million pounds of trash being removed from Yosemite, and it improved the relationship between climbers and the Park Service. Facelift continues in Yosemite and beyond today, with annual cleanup events in the park and surrounding gateway communities. “It’s inspired other groups to a similar approach,” he says. “We’ve had a big influence.”
“He’s a visionary, an entrepreneur, and he dreamed up YCA and collecting all these artifacts, and he dreamed up Facelift to take care of the park,” says Jerry Gallwas. Gallwas, Royal Robbins, and Mike Sherrick made the first ascent of the Northwest Face of Half Dome in 1957. “I mean, those are very significant contributions to climbing and also to the stewardship of a place we all love.”
Ken adds, “Through this newsletter, I hope we can reconnect climbers to Yosemite — past, present, and future — and give back to the community by preserving and celebrating the history we all love.”
Photo taken by Chris Van Leuven at base of El Capitan.
Success in 7 Steps: The Latest Title from Dierdre Wolownick (Honnold)
“This book isn’t just about climbing—it’s about any goal, at any age, for anyone willing to follow the steps.”
March 7, 2025 | Las Vegas—A text from Dierdre Wolownick pops up on my phone with a link to her latest interview, released today by Nevada Public Radio: Mom of ‘Free Solo’ climber, this Las Vegas resident is just as impressive. The story highlights her impressive achievements both on and off the rock and mentions her latest book, Success in 7 Steps, released on Feb. 17.
The story by Heidi Kyser, distributed by NPR, highlights that while she is the mother of arguably the most famous climber in the world, “Dierdre’s story is equally impressive in its own right.”
A multilingual, Wolownick speaks seven languages, has run four marathons, taught herself to swim as an adult, and conducted the West Sacramento Orchestra. Most notably, at age 66, she climbed El Cap via Lurking Fear. With her son Alex and his friend Sam Crossley, Dierdre jugged up their lines and reached the top of the wall in 13 hours (taking six hours to descend), marking the oldest female ascent of the formation.
She has also co-authored around 16 books and personally written six. Her latest, Success in 7 Steps, emphasizes that “Anybody can do anything if they approach it right. Everything I’ve ever achieved—including conducting an orchestra to climbing El Cap—followed the same seven steps.”
Dierdre wrote Success in 7 Steps over a year and a half while managing a move to Vegas and appearing on dozens of podcasts (she has done 46). The title is available on Amazon in paperback, hardback, and Kindle. She emphasizes, “It’s not a motivational book. It’s a how-to book, step by step.” The Amazon description states that the book “reveals a practical, results-driven framework that empowers you to achieve any goal, no matter how ambitious.”
Raised in Queens, New York, Dierdre says, “I grew up climbing street signs, not rocks. Climbing wasn’t a sport back then.” She adds that public pools were so jam-packed in the summers that it was elbow to elbow, which is why she didn’t learn to swim until later in life.
She moved to France for a year from New York, then back to New York, then Southern California, where she taught at UCLA. Then, she worked in Japan for several years as a professor and, after that, settled in Northern California for 40 years. She raised her children in Sacramento and retired from teaching there until moving just down the road from her son outside Red Rocks in Nevada (her daughter Stasia lives in Portland, Oregon). While in Sacramento, she wrote a slew of books, including travel, language and two novels, and worked as a language professor. She also ran a publishing company.
Dierdre has been a self-publisher, an independent publisher, and a traditionally published author. Her books include Chicken Soup for the Writer’s Soul, the French textbook Allez, and her memoir The Sharp End of Life: A Mother’s Story (published in multiple countries).
Today, she is an author and speaker who has appeared on daytime television, often in connection with Free Solo. She has also been featured on CNN, The New York Times, Men’s Journal (in a story I wrote; read it here), and Adventure Sports Journal (read my story here).
She says she’s used these success steps her whole life, always approaching her goals systematically. She directly applied them to climbing El Cap, where the book’s idea came from. Despite climbing at the gym and weeks of training specifically for ascending fixed lines, the ascent took a serious toll on her body. She had to push through torn knuckles, bruised toes, and full-body exhaustion. Wanting it badly enough got her through the most challenging moments—reinforcing the first step in Success in 7 Steps.
“People don’t take the time to learn everything they need to know before attempting something new,” she says. “Most people don’t distinguish between a dream and a goal—a dream is vague, while a goal requires a structured approach.”
The book is broken down into three categories. The first, What You Need to Know, begins with Want it Badly Enough, followed by Learn Everything You Need to Know. The second, What You Need to Have, includes Gather the Necessary Tools and Resources. The third, What You Need to Do, focuses on Start Taking Action Right Away.
She adds, “Alex spent 10 years preparing for his free solo ascent of El Cap via Freerider. That’s Category Three. Work. The first time he tried to free solo El Cap, he bailed—because he knew he wasn’t ready. He finished Category One, then Category Two, and only then could he succeed.”
“I taught myself to swim at 40; that’s also Category One. I’ve been a teacher, a musician, a linguist, an author, and now a climber—and it all comes from knowing how to start from scratch.”
“Whatever your goal is or your dream—however you look at it—you can make it a reality using this method,” she says.
Success in 7 Steps, at 137 pages, is available on Amazon in paperback for $12.95, hardback for $25.99, and Kindle for $9.99.
PHOTO OF THE WEEK
Tom Herbert on the West Face of Leaning Tower | Photo Taken by Chris Van Leuven