Anna Torretta alone on Zodiac, A2 5.7, Yosemite Valley.

Six climbing days, five bivouacs alone in the wall to climb 540 meters of A2 and 5.7 obligatory (V+ UIAA or 5° French grade, ndr). This is the price that Anna Torretta has had to pay to live an experience, unique in its genre, on the world’s most famous granite face, El Capitan, Yosemite Valley. This is not extraordinary though. Singular is the fact that Zodiac represented for Anna the first experience of solo artificial climbing. Début without preamble, therefore, for this thirty-two-year-old alpine guide and architect from Turin, who lives and works in Innsbruck. A degree in architecture, she works part-time as industrial designer, and she alternates this job with the profession of alpine guide. In 2001 she has founded Avventura Donna in Austria, the first women’s alpine school in Europe. Recently, with some friends, this time in Turin, she has created the first mountaineering formation center La Traccia.
Very passionate of everything bound to the climbing world, in the last months she has felt a sudden interest for aid climbing. From that point on it has been a short step.
Oscar Durbiano

El Capitan, Zodiac: six days, five bivouacs in the wall, alone.
It’s the beginning of September, I am in Valle dell’Orco on the Sergent, yesterday I have modified the Gri-gri, I want to try if it works. Incastromania seems the right route to me, with a little Yosemite character. I can concentrate only on the ropes, and not think too much about climbing. The rope is fixed at the base, I climb with the modified Gri-gri. I reach the belay, last check of the equipment and … lets see if it locks! This was my first approach to the solo climbing techniques.
A few weeks later I am in Valle dell’Orco again, to practice aid climbing.
«Lorenzo, there is somebody outside the truck, may be a fox is stealing the garbage!». I have finally managed to arrange a meeting with the Italian master of aid climbing, Lorenzo Nadali.
The next day I am on the Caporal, and I belay Nadali on the A5 pitch of Aerospike, the route of Folco. «Can you send me a small ring and a Lost Arrow?» asks a voice above me. I tie the small requested pitons for the progression to the haul line.
I learned in this way what it means to aid climb, I learned what is a rurp, a beak, a head …. I have learned and then I have tested, this time on lead, on La Rivoluzione (A2) always in Valle dell’Orco and still with Lorenzo Nadali.
October, I am in Yosemite Valley, in front of El Capitan, under Zodiac. Somebody is coming down from the belay stance of the second pitch. «It’s too hot today!» exclaims a local climber with American accent, after touching the ground. I nod, let down my haulbag and sit on the ground, dazed by the heat. I look at the first pitch of the route: three rivets (heads of rivets sunk a few centimeters in the rock, on which the cables or steel hangers necessary for the progression can be attached, ndr), a thin crack, another rivet, then the perfect crack, slightly overhanging, until under a roof.
I wait for the American to pack his stuff and go down to the valley, before putting on my harness and start, anyway it is too hot! In fact I am ashamed and I’d rather not have him looking while I get started. I only want to make a try and see how far I get. I am reaching the fourth rivet, as I hear a rope slamming on the rocks. I turn and see Alexander Huber going down. I assume that the German brothers are trying to free climb the route.
We exchange greetings: «Hi! Heiss, hot. Impossible to climb today, no friction for the shoes.» It is 4 P.M.; I reach my rivets and start to clean the half pitch I have climbed. Also Thomas comes down. He asks me if I want to solo Zodiac, I shrug my shoulders and reply: «May be, I am learning to aid climb».

The second day I come back, climb the same pitch again. The progression is more fluid, but when I arrive 15 meters from the belay I have finished the gear. Not a runner, a carabiner, and also the nuts are finished. I can’t do anything else but descend. But how?
I look around and I see a stuck friend, a little higher. I manage to reach it and I connect it with a piton. Thanks to this makeshift belay I can rappel and think about what happened. I have learned that if in the topo is written that two sets of nuts and two of micro-nuts (useful the offsets) are necessary, I should have with me the requested gear, better if the nuts have conical shape. Otherwise I get unnecessary problems and troubles, dumbly transforming an A2 pitch in an A5 one. The message has been clear: Zodiac is teaching me and I am learning.

I place the gear in the first four pitches frustrating slowly, but in this way my self-teaching course of solo aid climbing arrives to its end. If I continue on the route, from this moment on, I will not have a rope anymore, that connects me with the ground, I will have to take with me water, food, portaledge and everything else I need to survive in this vertical granite desert. From the next pitches on the way out will be only the top. I will have to make it alone, in short. But I can do it.
I sleep in Camp 4, the mythical climber campground, a night troubled by my concerns. In the morning I prepare water and the haulbag. A friend helps me to carry everything to the base of the wall. Tomorrow the trip begins! The wall scares me a little less: we have got to know each other, we became friends and we speak together.
8.30 A.M., October 9. I start after a coffee in the lodge, offered by two Swiss friends, Caroline and David. They are also climbing Zodiac. I am not sure yet that I will be able to get off the ground. I have the uncertainty of the haulbag, 50 kilos that I have to rig up 150 meters. But I manage it. The harness cuts in my hips every time I reach the belay stance, but by now I have “entered” the wall and now this is the only thing that counts.
October 11. Under the overhangs, in the middle of the route, I see below two climbers racing up. They have long hair and naked upper body: they can be only the Huber brothers. In an afternoon they have climbed the section of the wall I have climbed in three days. They reach the belay stance below me and scream up in Bavarian dialect:
«Kannst du bitte unsere Seile nehmen … Please, can you climb up our static rope on the next pitch? We are going to free climb it... ».
I am slow, tired, but motivated for my ascent. I think a little before answering… Then the answer is obvious, the temptation wins and I answer yes. In the evening, lying in the portaledge, I recall my day: what did I invest all my energies for? To jug up Huber’s static rope?
I glance through the pages of the book I took with me, “Big Walls” of J. Long and J. Mittendorf. May be tomorrow I should change my climbing tactics. The wall is terribly overhanging and the haulbag is still too heavy.
October 12. The “Mark of Zorro”, the crack on the Z-roof, is waiting for me. To haul the bag along these pitches is harder than climbing. The haulbag’s weight is lower, compared with the first day, but it’s still 45 kilos, that I let swing in the void 20 meters away from the overhanging wall. I must wait until it stops swinging, I can’t make any mistakes, and I couldn’t correct them. I still have to climb up the rope with the jumars, before I begin to haul the bag. I try not to feel too stressed in this situation. The concentration is total. I climb with the static rope tied directly into my harness. I don’t use the haul line anymore, and I am carrying all the gear for the pitch. I am curious how much I weight!
October 13. From the Sahara to Patagonia. Nothing is half way here: during the other days a stifling heat, and today a terrible wind. The ropes move like snakes, when they don’t sail horizontally, pulled by the gusts of wind that makes progression even harder. That’s all I needed!
I set up the portaledge on the Peanut Ledge, 6’x2’ feet, great bivy for 1, as the topo says. It is the bigger ledge since I started. Finally I can walk two steps and piss without hanging in my harness. This is the last bivy. If everything works as planned tomorrow I top out. The moon illuminates El Cap summit, I listen to the music of “Dido” in my sleeping bag. Finally I can relax.
October 14. The last pitch is endless; I don’t know how much it takes, because I have lost my watch. A move on reversed cam hook (a “L” shaped cliff used in torsion in cracks, ndr) to reach the penultimate piton and then the exit. I don’t even stand up, I don’t have the courage and will to scream. Simply, I cry with joy for the emotion and for the quality of the gift I gave myself.
Anna Torretta