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Video: Speed Ascent of El Cap’s Zenyatta Mondatta

On October 3, 2014, David Allfrey, Skiy DeTray and Cheyne Lempe climbed the 16-pitch A4 El Capitan testpiece Zenyatta Mondatta, shaving several hours off the speed record. Yesterday, DeTray’s cousin Dave Coy sent us an 8.5-minute film containing footage he captured during their climb.

[We reported this ascent in a NewsWire on October 17–Ed.]

Coy visited Yosemite in 2008 to watch Allfrey, Kevin Prince and DeTray climb El Cap by an A4 route called Tribal Rite. Six years later, he returned to Yosemite to document one of their speed ascents.

To record the trio’s journey up Zenyatta Mondatta, Coy equipped DeTray with a GoPro. He also jugged up a line that DeTray had fixed on the route’s first pitch the night before to record him re-leading it. After the team passed his anchor, Coy rapped to the base, hiked over to El Cap’s East Ledges descent and jugged hundreds of feet of line to reach the top. Then he slogged over to the route and rapped over the edge and down 500 feet of rope to film the top section of their climb. “I love being involved in these projects; it makes me feel alive,” Coy says.


To find out more about Coy, follow him on Instagram.–Chris Van Leuven

Check out Coy’s video below:

Dave Coy