Ethan Pringle

More than 50 days of effort, hundreds of miles of hiking, hundreds of hours spent at this boulder, thousands of tries, and it was all over in a minute. Ethan Pringle hadd finally had the experience he was looking for.

"The moves, the length, the obviousness of the path—it was a king line, or rather, a queen line ... I felt confident a send would come after fairly little effort ... But La Reina Mora is a fearsome queen who demands respect. When in the beginning I ... stood in awe of her beauty, now I looked up at her with resentment for the way she’d exposed my weaknesses and insecurities."

MHW athletes Cheyne Lempe and Ethan Pringle explore the crack systems on the north face of higher Cathedral Rock in Yosemite, an area that is seldom climbed due to a challenging approach and constant gardening.