I don’t know what time it was when my husband at the time, the rock climber Tommy Caldwell, finally scrambled over the summit. The sun had risen sometime during the first part of the climb and had set again hours later. He had just completed the second free ascent of the Direct Route on the northwest face of Half Dome, a 2,000-foot climb in Yosemite National Park. The climber Todd Skinner spent 61 days in 1993 working to establish the Direct Route, then considered the most difficult big wall climb in the world, before reaching the top. Hanging in the middle of Half Dome was an ordinary thing.

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Persons: Tommy Caldwell, Todd Skinner, Tommy, Skinner Locations: Yosemite