My name is Mark Houdon. I'm 59 years old. I first climbed here in 1974 when I was 18.
I moved out west after that and I've been out west climbing here. Lately in 2009 I started
getting back into big wall climbing and I climbed the nose in a day and the next year
I soloed LCAP and since then I've been doing two and three LCAP walls a year and pretty
much these days I'm a fixture here. I just love climbing LCAP and so in all its different
forms and variations. I mean I've got my hauling video out there so I mean every single season
I'm down here somebody will come up to me and say hey are these good pulleys or we did
the route. You know some guy just donated to my tips page because they had gone up on lurking
fear and they had done it because a couple of my tips really saved them a bunch of hours
being able to separate the haul bags and the hauling system. They just said hey man we
talked about you a lot and we really want to thank you for helping us do that route.
Which you know that's like you said we're not curing cancer we're all out here trying
to have fun and trying to climb LCAP you know so to me you know the scene I don't know all
you got to do is be friendly and that's all there is to it. I mean everyone over there
is friendly no one's a bad ass no one everyone's failed on LCAP everyone has their glory moments
but everyone definitely you know I've done the stick of the day enough times and I've
done the walk of shame enough times and you know that's the way it is that's sort of like
life that's how it works. The hardest part is getting all that crap to the base getting
it off the ground getting things organized by the time you're into day two you've spent
some time with your partner you've streamlined a little bit of things and now you're on the
route so now all you have to do is just go climb so you wake up in the morning make coffee
have breakfast look at the topo get the rack together and there isn't anything hard about
day two. Day two is probably the most beautiful day of the whole thing. Me I would be having
my own coffee that I roasted Hood River coffee roasters it's that's one of the things that
got me back into climbing was now that we had comfortable sleeping bags portal edges
we had stoves that you could haul up there we can now have good warm food breakfast lunch
and dinner now we could brew coffee so I've always had I've always had coffee for myself
I was always buffed out my partners with coffee there was a time recently where I was searching
around through my bags and I and I thought that I had actually forgotten the coffee and
I really didn't know what I was going to do but I didn't I had coffee in there so yeah
coffee to me is a big important part of the whole thing I'm really really selfish when
I climbed El Cap there's only there's only so many El Cap routes in my life and if you're
I've climbed El Cap with three people it tends to be a little bit clustery but I don't like
it because I ended up giving away a third of the climb I don't lead those pitches I
just clean them I don't see them I you know it's not it's just sort of not part of the
climb for me no doubt as I get older maybe I want to do party walls you know with three
people and just have a great old time up there I'm getting the point now that I might start
repeating some of the routes that I've done in the distant past but those will be party
walls those won't be my my serious walls things like like tempest and reticent the big aid
walls I go with a buddy that I'm just really in tune with and we're just really working
together there as a team to get up the thing so he leads a pitch I encourage them I clean
the pitch I lead a pitch he encourages me so we're really the team on it when I first came
back my third career here in Yosemite I wanted to do the nose in a day and as an example
of how selfish I am about climbing El Cap I decided I wanted to lead the whole nose
in a day I wanted to lead every single pitch so I did that and then my second El Cap route
that that spring 2010 I soloed El Cap so again I let every single pitch on the route so really
it there's only so many El Cap pitches in your life and I want them all I want to lead
them all I want to clean them all I want to be there on all of them.
