INSIDE A CUT DIAMOND, 1960

          During our fifth day on the Nose, Chuck led the Great Roof pitch and brought us up to the spacey position at its edge.  The top overhangs were still a thousand feet away and the route lay in a spacious recess between two huge buttresses.  The next day, our sixth, in that great dihedral, I found a place on the earth that I loved.  The sun shone, cool breezes blew upwards, and seas of living granite extended outward – east and west.  Earth below.  Sky above.  A place for man here - amidst expansive planes and their included piton crack, out of which occasionally grew bunches of colorful wildflowers.  I have never forgotten this place, and the connection I felt with it.  Joe must have sensed my enthusiasm for he gifted me his last pitch of the day.  Thank you climbing companions.  Thank you Mother Nature.

Steve Roper described this section:

        “The upper third of the Nose is one of the most soul-satisfying places in Yosemite.  Planes of marble-smooth granite shoot upward toward infinity.  The various dihedral walls, dead vertical at this stage, converge in broad, angular facets, and climbing through this magical place is like living inside a cut diamond.”  (Camp 4)

Midway in this cleavage, at the magical ledge Camp VI, Chuck and Royal turn a watchful eye to the scene above.

 
INSIDE A CUT DIAMOND, Pratt and Robbins at Camp VI, day six, second ascent of the Nose of El Capitan, Yosemite Valley, California by Royal Robbins, Chuck Pratt, Joe Fitschen, and Tom Frost, September 7-13, 1960.