How Yosemite climber’s unusual diet helped him smash world record

A climber has smashed the record for the fastest climb up The Nose, a route up El Capitan, but his bizarre diet in preparation for his ascent has left people baffled.

Nick Ehman, 28, scaled The Nose in Yosemite National Park, California, in four hours and 39 minutes.

He started his climb at around 8am on 10 October and crawled over the top of the lip of El Capitan by 12.41pm.

“I didn’t know when I set up that morning how comfortable I’d be going fast,” he told The San Francisco Chronicle.

But after he got onto the rockface, he started to feel “very comfortable in that no-fall headspace, and felt like I had to go for it.”

The previous record was held by Alex Honnold, best known as the star of the Academy Award-winning documentary Free Solo, which focused on his climb of El Capitan without using climbing equipment.

Before completing his free climb, he won the record for the fastest climb up The Nose using equipment in 2010, in five hours and 50 minutes.

Now, 13 years on, Mr Ehman has beaten this record by over an hour.

El Capitan stands at 2,900 feet high and to beat the record, he’d have to cover around eight and a half vertical feet per minute, the outlet said.

“Both climbers used a rope in places but mostly free soloed the route with occasional use of fixed and placed gear for aid and protection,” Tom Evans, who witnessed the climber’s race to the top, and runs the blog ElCap Report.

The ElCap Report also revealed the climber’s unusual diet, which boosted him to beat the record.

“His exceptional diet of meat, salt, and water seems to have given him unusual strength and endurance and he took no water or food on this run up the route,” the blog wrote. “Our local vegetarians were dumbfounded!”

Mr Ehman, who had already scurried his way up El Capitan through various routes around 15 times that season, reached the top where he met other climbers, who were able to provide him with water, the blog added.

“I was pretty emotional at the top. I’d been dreaming about that experience for a really long time — being light and unencumbered up there by myself,” Mr Ehman told the San Francisco Chronicle.

Mr Ehman is a part of Yosemite National Park’s search and rescue teams and is at the park for around 200 days a year, according to the outlet.

The first descent of El Capitan was in 1958 by a team led by Warren Harding, a well-known big wall climber.

Alex Honnold and his partner Tommy Caldwell still have the fasted speed climb as a two-person team to ascend up The Nose at one hour and 58 minutes in 2018.

Most attempts to climb the wall are usually done by a two-person team or more.

El Capitan attracts many people attempting to scale one of the US’ most hardest vertical climbs.