Emily Harrington free-climbs El Capitan summit in one day - BBC News
Emily Harrington reached the top of Yosemite's famed granite rock face in just over 21 hours.
American Emily Harrington is being celebrated for becoming one of the few women to free-climb Yosemite National Park's famous El Capitan within a day.

She is also the first woman to have used a challenging route known as the Golden Gate to reach the 3,000ft (1,000m) summit within 24 hours.

The achievement comes a year after she was sent to hospital after a 150ft fall during an El Capitan climb.

Free-climbers do not use ropes to ascend, but have them for safety.

"I never believed I could actually free-climb El Cap in a day when I first set the goal for myself," the 34-year-old wrote on Instagram.

"Impossible dreams challenge us to rise above who we are now to see if we can become better versions of ourselves."

She set off with her boyfriend, Mount Everest guide Adrian Ballinger, and renowned climber Alex Honnold, who made history when he scaled El Capitan in 2017 solo and unassisted.

The trio began their climb at 01:34 on 4 November - just after Election Day in the US. Ms Harrington noted she was caught between her own "internal drama of achieving a life goal" and that of the election as they began.

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During her attempt this year, Ms Harrington fell again - she ended up with a bleeding wound above her eye, but kept pressing on.

She described it in her post as a "nasty slip" that "almost took [her] resolve".

"A deep gash on my forehead left my bloody and defeated. I pulled on again, part of me not really wanting to stay on the wall, the other part gathering courage and flow."

Photographer and climber Jon Glassberg, who was there to document the journey, said in his own post about Ms Harrington: "I have not seen toughness like this in climbing before and likely won't again."

It used to take weeks for rock climbers to reach the top of El Capitan, even with the aid of a partner and climbing aids.

Few women have accomplished the free climb.

The first, Lynn Hill, some three decades ago, used the The Nose route.

In recent years, three people - all men - have managed to climb the granite monolith via the Golden Gate route within a day.

Ms Harrington told the San Francisco Chronicle it was important to her to become the first woman to do the same.

"I spent a lot of years feeling like I didn't belong, like maybe I hadn't earned my place to be a Yosemite climber," she told the paper. "But throughout this experience I learned that there is no belonging or not belonging, no formula to achievement up there."

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated Emily Harrington was the first woman to free-climb El Capitan within a day, information supplied by a news agency. She was in fact the fourth but the first to do so using the Golden Gate route.