Wings of Steel—likely El Cap’s hardest aid route and unrepeated since its first ascent 29 years ago—has finally been repeated.  After repulsing accomplished big-wall veterans including Rob Slater and Kevin Thaw, Wings of Steel has been climbed by the “El Cap Pirate” Ammon McNeely and his partner/girlfriend Kait Barber. At this writing the duo have completed Wings proper and are exiting via the Aquarian Wall.

Wings of Steel is El Cap’s most controversial route. Mark Smith and Richard Jensen—two unknown Valley “outsiders”—arrived in 1982 to climb the apparently blank Great Slab to the left of the Salathe Wall. They found compact granite on a low-angle face that could be climbed—barely—using tiny Leeper pointed hooks on nearly invisible rugosities. So impossible did the climbing appear that numerous Yosemite locals assumed that Smith and Jensen were drilling and chipping their way up the face.

Disgusted by the perceived desecration, the team's snail-like pace and the fact that Smith and Jensen hadn't paid their proper dues by repeating El Cap's hard big walls of the day, local climbers threatened Smith and Jensen, verbally abused them and in a night-time raid, pulled their fixed rope on the first pitch and defecated on it. Rather than bailing, however, an angered Smith and Jensen reclimbed the start and completed the route in a month-long continuous push requiring horrendous whippers and a dislocated ankle.

What followed may be the greatest character assassination campaign in climbing history, with Jensen and Smith purported to be villains, scoundrels and liars. In spite of Jensen and Smith's reporting in excruciating detail of the route’s hook and hole count, Wings of Steel was dismissed as a bolt and hook ladder. Since their ascent, Jensen and Smith have been bashed in guidebooks, texts and magazines, and relentlessly slandered through word of mouth and in internet forums.

Preliminary reports now suggest Smith and Jensen told the truth about everything, including the 15 or so “micro-enhancements” they made to avoid drilling rivets. The hooking is reportedly “sick” and insanely hard above long and dangerous runouts. Master speed climber McNeely required six hours and took three 30-foot falls on the first pitch alone. Higher up he also took many falls including at least one 50-footer to work out the hooking sequences. In one fall, McNeely dislocated his shoulder and reset it himself to persevere on what may be the most difficult big-wall route ever established.

—Pete Zabrok