In Yosemite Val­ley, No route is more icon­ic than The Nose. The first route to scale El Cap­i­tan, The Nose was first climbed in 1958 and took 47 days to com­plete.  Near­ly two decades after the first ascent was made, The Nose was climbed in just 24 hours.  At 2,900 ft. in height, The Nose still takes most par­ties sev­er­al days to reach it’s pinnacle.

Over the last decade, a hand­ful of elite climber’s have been rac­ing the clock, prac­ti­cal­ly run­ning up the steep faces of Yosemite Val­ley’s El Cap­i­tan. When the con­di­tions are per­fect, these elite few set off at a furi­ous pace, employ­ing speed climb­ing tac­tics in order to reach the top as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. The most cov­et­ed speed climb­ing accom­plish­ment in the val­ley is an ascent of The Nose, and these climber’s are reach­ing the top in mere hours.

As of yes­ter­day, big wall speed climbers Alex Hon­nold and Hans Florine shat­tered the pre­vi­ous Nose In a Day (NIAD) record of 2:36:45, shav­ing almost 13 min­utes off of the pre­vi­ous time, in a mind-blow­ing 2:23:46. Who knows how much more quick­ly the NIAD can be climbed, but rest assured that a deter­mined few will con­tin­ue to try to push their lim­its in the ulti­mate test of rock climb­ing endurance. Click through to see a detailed pho­to­graph­ic report of the climb­ing teams amaz­ing accomplishment.