Yosemite’s Climbing Challenge in the FaceTime Age

MADISON, N.H. — A LITTLE before noon on Nov. 18, 1970, a blood-flecked hand pawed the top of the southeast face of El Capitan, the massive, 3,000-foot vertical wall in Yosemite National Park known to climbers as the Dawn Wall. A bearded, wild-eyed man eventually pulled himself up and stumbled back into the realm of horizontal existence after 26 nights lashed to the cliff.