This Undercover Crusher Just Established Her Third Big Wall Route in Yosemite

Taylor Martin is proving that Yosemite is far from climbed out with her new, 1600-foot first ascent, ‘Hummingbird’ (5.9+ A4).

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Taylor Martin pauses on a beak seam midway up their 1600-foot A4 first ascent, 'Hummingbird,' in Yosemite Valley. (Photo: Courtesy of Taylor Martin)

I sit at Taylor Martin’s picnic table in front of her tent cabin in the Search and Rescue (SAR) site at the back of Camp 4. A light breeze stirs her wind chime, which is made of old climbing gear: bongs and other relics discovered while exploring obscure granite seams. We thumb through Taylor’s well-loved Yosemite Bigwalls guidebook; every photo of a major formation has been overlaid in black ballpoint pen with possible new routes. Looming over us on either side of the Valley floor rise the Camp 4 Wall and Sentinel Rock.

Four days prior, on August 5th, Taylor topped out her solo first ascent on her new route, Hummingbird (5.9+ A4; 1600ft) on Sentinel Rock. Taylor’s new route underscores the fact that there is still a plethora of unclimbed rock in Yosemite Valley, and that it is curious spirits such as hers that pave the way for future ascents.

The Sentinel holds a special place in any Valley SAR siter’s heart. The guardian of the Valley, it watches over the dusty little circle of tent cabins below the boulders in Camp 4. On many evenings over the years, SAR siters have walked up into the talus field to sit at the Derek Hersey Memorial Bench and watch the evening glow fade from its serenely imposing face. Some nights, they watch headlamps appear on the Steck-Salathé (5.10-), one of the 50 Classic Climbs of North America.

Taylor tells me, “You end up staring at a certain wall long enough that you start getting curious about the possibilities. Eventually you just have to go up there and find out for yourself.” Several of the routes climbed on the Sentinel are the result of former Valley SAR members’ curiosity. Bryan Kay, a SAR member, established Early Times (5.9 A3) with Joshua Thompson in 2001. Cedar Wright, who spent five years on the SAR site, made the first free ascents of Uncertainty Principle (5.13a) in 2001 and Psychedelic Wall (5.12c) in 2002. The last route established on the formation was Short Haul Bait (5.8 A2+), put up in 2014 by two SAR siters, Cheyne Lempe and Everett Phillips. Now Taylor has picked up the torch, forging her own path up its magnificent, lichen-covered ramparts.

Trial by fire

Taylor, 32, is from Atlanta, Georgia. She started climbing in the winter of 2020 just outside of Durango, Colorado. With the basic essentials, she scraped her way up some of the local ice formations. Taylor discovered the dark arts of rope soloing and aid climbing in the Fisher Towers in Moab, Utah. These Seussian spires of petrified mud hold a special place in any aspiring aid soloist’s heart, the soft sandstone offering plentiful opportunities for creative and unusual gear placements — and sporting many of the most dangerous aid routes in the U.S. Early adventures alone on these formations gave Taylor the bold inventiveness required of any serious aid soloist.

Taylor made her first pilgrimage to the rock climber’s mecca of Yosemite Valley in the summer of 2021. Describing her relationship with the crucible of American rock climbing, she says, “It’s this place where adventure is endless, and as long as you’re creative, you can find new ways to move through the terrain. There’s always some other wall to climb.” In 2024, Taylor established Dirt Worm (5.9 + A3 R; 1500 ft.) on Yosemite Falls Wall and The Infinite Now (5.10a A4 R; 1500 ft.) on Camp 4 Wall. This year, she joined the Valley SAR team to have even more time to examine the walls surrounding her for more possibilities.

Last fall, while Taylor was hanging out with Stu Kuperstock, the local keeper of traditions and climbing lore in Yosemite Valley, Stu suggested the possibility of finishing a line on the Sentinel previously attempted by Everett Phillips. As one of the most developed big wall climbing destinations in the world, vertical real estate for long new routes in Yosemite Valley is limited and highly coveted. With this tempting information in mind, Taylor began to examine the wall for possibilities. She zoomed in on every high-resolution photo available on the Internet and spent hours squinting through a spotting scope. Eventually, all of Taylor’s open-minded curiosity came to a head and demanded to be put to the test.

“An entirely different world”

Carrying all of the gear required to establish a big wall first ascent to the base of the Sentinel, which is an arduous 1400 feet above the valley floor, was a beast in and of itself. Taylor carried up enough food for nine days and enough water for 10 to 12. After four days of ferrying loads to the base and fixing three full rope lengths, she committed to finishing the route.

Hummingbird crosses over Flying Buttress Direct (5.10 C2) twice, but Taylor estimates her route to be more than 90% independent terrain. It covers 1600 feet in 13 pitches, 11 of which are previously unclimbed. To her delight, the moves proved to be quite technical. In a slightly giddy tone, she tells me that “several of the pitches required hammering more than twenty or twenty five beaks,” much more than the handful required for your typical Yosemite big wall route. She proposes a grade of A4 5.9+, with one A4 pitch and six A3 or A3+ pitches.

To add anchors to the new terrain, Taylor drilled 33 fixed anchor pieces using a combination of bolts and rivets, with fixed keyhole hangers left in the hopes of increased longevity for future ascents. She had to be careful not to dislodge any large loose rocks with the start of the Steck-Salathé and the popular Four Mile Trail below, making some of the pitches extra stressful. Taylor climbed for six days to establish the route, spending a night on the summit and hiking everything down on the seventh day.

I ask Taylor if there were any particularly memorable moments from her ascent. After reflecting for a moment, she replies, “Maybe the best part of the whole wall was just how many awesome bivy ledges are up there. The first six pitches are quite sheer, but culminate in a great, rock-bench bivy, right on the prow of the Sentinel, with stunning views of El Capitan and the Valley. The top of the eighth pitch makes for an amazing bivy, too, just to the right of pitch 10 on the Steck-Salathé.”

Taylor considers pitch nine, which she dubbed The Fourth Dimension, to be the best pitch on the route. The pitch travels through the sea of luminant, neon-green lichen to the right of the infamous Narrows pitch on the Steck-Salathé. It’s even visible from the Valley floor. The climbing involved hammering thin beaks, balancing on delicate hooks, and smashing copperheads into tiny flares just to move farther right, away from the Steck-Salathé and into a rarely traveled aspect of the formation. “It felt as if I was climbing into an entirely different world,” Taylor says.

Why aid solo?

Climbing alone is time consuming, but Taylor savors the process. She describes moving up the wall at her own pace as a “relaxed ordeal.” The feeling of being in a wild place and not feeling any rush to finish the project or be somewhere else is a liberating experience for Taylor and one that she seeks out often.

Part of this kind of vertical curiosity also has to do with the sheer enjoyment of the technical nature of the climbing itself. Taylor finds delight in all assortments of unusual placements. Her camera roll consists of long strings of photos taken while on lead: close up shots of stacked pitons, thin beak placements, heads stuck in unlikely positions like gum plastered to the underside of a school desk. Taylor finds genuine joy in this kind of creative problem solving, and she relishes the gumption and tenacity involved in toiling up unclimbed terrain alone. “I like being faced with weird stretches of rock and problem solving on the fly to navigate those sections,” she says. After all, big wall solo first ascents are only achieved through radical self reliance.

When I ask how she landed on the name Hummingbird, Taylor says “There was this hummingbird that kept showing up every morning and hovering around and checking in on me.” Compared to other routes the aid soloist has established in the Valley, this route on the Sentinel is her favorite and the one she would most recommend to others to be repeated.

She has tons of future projects in mind, with more lines scoped on the Camp 4 Wall, which rises directly above her cabin. At the time of writing, Taylor is putting up another new route on the Panorama Wall. She hopes to explore unclimbed terrain on every major wall in the Valley, and will continue to seek obscure and remote perspectives.