El Capitan

El Capitan, Spanish for The Captain or The Chief, is a granite monolith 3000 feet tall. Rock climbers from all over the world climb El Capitan, and we take some time during the tour to view their activity from the meadow below.

The formation was named El Capitan by the Mariposa Battalion when it explored the valley in 1851. The top of El Capitan can be reached by hiking out of Yosemite Valley on the trail next to Yosemite Falls, then proceeding west.For climbers, the challenge is to climb up the sheer granite face via climbing routes, all of them arduous.