Kate Kelleghan and Laura Pineau Become the First Women to Complete the Yosemite Triple Crown

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I. Every Second Counts

It’s 10:15 p.m. when the white van rolls into El Capitan Meadow. A nearly full moon illuminates the 3,000-foot monolith against the ink-blue sky. Twenty people cluster by the fences, the June night too warm for jackets. As the van’s headlights dim, two colors inside become visible—pink leggings for Kate Kelleghan, red for Laura Pineau. The crowd begins to shriek in a charged-up wave.

Former Yosemite Search and Rescue (YOSAR) member Jack Keane steps out, all business: “They’re going to rack up first. Then we can cheer them on.”

The crowd falls silent. Kelleghan and Pineau jump from the van and start clipping cams to their gear loops with the frantic velocity of two people trying to win a carnival race. Pineau looks exhausted, but has time for one joke.

“Just one more wall!” she says, then corrects herself: “Two more walls!” She shakes her head as if the thought is too heavy, and switches her focus back to the gear.

The duo has just returned from climbing the South Face (5.9 C2+; 2200 feet) of Mount Watkins. For most climbers, Watkins is a multi-day adventure in its own right, but for Kelleghan and Pineau, it’s the first of three routes in the Yosemite Triple Crown: a legendary, one-day linkup of Yosemite’s three largest formations.

Pineau, a 5.14a/5.13d crack climber, has never done more than one of those formations in a day, but Kelleghan, a former YOSAR member and speed veteran, has linked the other two: the Regular Northwest Face (5.9 C1; 2200 feet) of Half Dome and the Nose (5.9 C2; 3000 feet) on El Cap. Only 10 pairs of men—plus Alex Honnold alone—have completed the Triple Crown in the 24 years since Dean Potter and Timmy O’Neill first established it.

Tonight, even though they’ve shaved 40 minutes from their personal best on Watkins, Kelleghan and Pineau have zero minutes to spare in their pursuit of becoming the first women to achieve a Triple Crown. When Kelleghan’s head snaps up from arranging her harness, her former YOSAR teammate Katy Stockton wordlessly steps forward and opens her empty backpack. Both Pineau and Kelleghan stuff their harnesses into it and pull it closed.

Finally, Kelleghan flexes her fists toward the ground, takes a breath, and releases a single power scream. Twenty voices multiply it, adding yodels and monkey noises, the sheer volume making up for the pep talks the crowd doesn’t have time to give. By the time the cheer subsides, the two women and their volunteer porters are power-walking into the redwoods, barely holding themselves back from running.

Fifteen minutes later, two bright pinpricks appear on the bottom of El Capitan. For the past two weeks, Pineau has rehearsed the four-pitch sequence of the Nose in her head, move by move, every night before she went to sleep. But she’s never tried the sequence after another wall, let alone one as big as Mount Watkins. From the Meadow, the first little light can be seen beginning to wobble upward.

II. The Yosemite Triple Crown: 2001 to Present

The Yosemite Triple Crown is nearly as famous as its roster of victors. Before 2021, the list included Dean Potter and Timmy O’Neill, and Alex Honnold and Tommy Caldwell—who, incredibly, freed all 71 pitches. Just weeks after his free ascent with Caldwell, Honnold upped the ante by rope-soloing the Triple, which no climber has done since. The pre-2021 list also includes Dave Allfrey and Cheyne Lempe, as well as Brad Gobright and Jim Reynolds, who set the Triple speed record in 2018 of 18 hours 45 minutes.

As a 7,000-foot vertical test involving 18 miles of hiking in between formations, the Triple represents more than just an ultra-style event. It’s also a mental challenge that requires accepting the risk of massive falls under sleep-deprived conditions. Pitches in Yosemite average about 100 feet each; the average trad climber places 12-18 pieces of protection per pitch. Pineau estimates that, to save time, she leaves just two, which would leave regular trad climbers wide-eyed with shock.

From 2021 to 2023, the climbing community bagged a Triple a year, largely by the YOSAR team: Jordan Cannon and Scott Bennett in 2021; Danford Jooste and Nick Ehman in 2022; and Tyler Karow and Miles Fullman in 2023. In an Instagram post after his final topout, Fullman called it the “final exam for a Yosemite speed climber and a lifetime achievement,” adding that five of the eight Triple triumphs (including Honnold’s solo) had included a YOSAR member.

But in the last two years, the speed game has increased in popularity. For some, it’s become almost casual. Two noteworthy partnerships rocked the Valley in 2024. In late June, Ima Amundarain and Cedar Christensen biked between the three formations for a “human-powered Triple,” bringing along canteens of red wine for extra fun. Then, last October, Tanner Wanish and Michael Vaill set a new speed record at 17 hours 55 minutes, returning one week later to add a fourth wall, the South Face (5.8 C1; 1200 feet) of the Washington Column. They dubbed their achievement the Yosemite Quad.

This spring, a record three teams converged on the Valley with hopes of completing the Triple. Jacob Cook, who became the seventh person to send Golden Gate (5.13b) in a day last fall, teamed up with Brant Hysell, who holds the Lurking Fear rope solo and team speed records. Hans Beuttler and Noah Fox, who last year completed the Double—El Cap, plus Half Dome—in 22 hours and 49 minutes, also joined Kelleghan and Pineau in their single-minded quest. The 2025 Triple hopefuls formed a group chat called “Triple Triple Threat.”

“Honestly, the group chat was my favorite part of the season,” Beuttler told me earlier this week. “All three teams were just all so supportive of each other.” Throughout April and May, every time one of the teams did a training lap on a formation, they would text in their times, or “splits,” to the group chat, building off each other’s momentum.

According to Kelleghan, most prior Triple teams have made their attempt within three days of the summer solstice in late June, enduring oppressive heat in exchange for maximizing daylight. However, this year’s teams decided that late May and early June was hot enough. Last week, Beuttler and Fox’s attempt ended halfway through their second formation, the Nose, when Beuttler accidentally pulled out a #4 cam and took a 20-foot fall, spraining his ankle. Two days before, Cook and Hysell pulled off a 22-hour ascent that Cook noted was harder than he expected.

But with stormy weather on the horizon, Kelleghan and Pineau kept pushing off their ascent, hoping to avoid getting caught in a thunderstorm on Half Dome and Mount Watkins. Even a speed climber’s frugal rack contains enough metal to attract lightning. Finally, they set a start date and time when the weather looked clear: 4 p.m. on Saturday, June 7, 2025.

III. The Elusive Search for a Female Partner

Kelleghan has been meticulously plotting for this one 24-hour window for the past three years. In fact, ever since June 16, 2022, when she topped out Half Dome on the Double, Kelleghan—now 32 years old—has been scouting for a female partner that could match her speed, stoke, and risk tolerance.

But in June 2022, that partner didn’t yet exist. Laura Pineau, then 22, was sleeping at Miguel’s Pizza in the Red River Gorge, Kentucky, and didn’t consider herself a trad climber. She’d gotten spooked on Yosemite’s Munginella (5.6) two years prior and sworn off trad. Then, in September, Pineau met Brittany Goris at a climbing festival and spent the next two months learning crack technique from her in Indian Creek. By the end of the season, Goris recommended that Pineau aim for Freerider (5.13a) on El Cap.

In 2023, both Kelleghan and Pineau spent extensive time in Yosemite, but they never crossed paths. Keeping her eyes out for a solid Triple partner, Kelleghan dialed her Nose beta in the spring by climbing the route multiple times, hitting her personal best at eight hours and 38 minutes with Danford Jooste.

At the same time, on El Cap, Pineau backed off Freerider, taught herself how to big wall, and attempted the Nose, bailing at the Great Roof due to weather. That summer, Pineau went to Squamish and launched an intensive training program to get in better free climbing shape. In August, Kelleghan got the call to fill an empty YOSAR roster spot. The two didn’t cross paths in the fall, either, but Pineau sent Freerider and started looking for a new goal.

Finally, in April 2024, Pineau fell into Kelleghan’s speed climbing world. Pineau was chilling in a van in Camp 4 with her then-boyfriend Michael Vaill and his speed partner Tanner Wanish—the same duo that would break the Triple Crown speed record (and establish the Quad) six months later. Wanish mentioned offhand that a female YOSAR member was looking for a female speed climbing partner. Pineau got curious and asked for her name.

“When Laura messaged me, she was super nice,” says Kelleghan. “I told her, yes, I’d like to climb, but I’m only climbing three routes.” She knew Pineau had climbed Freerider, but had never speed climbed—not even the Nose in a day (NIAD).

But Kelleghan was running out of options. “If I can’t find a woman next year who wants to train for the Triple, I’m just going to do it with a guy,” she said at the time. “I’d rather do that than not do the Triple at all.”

A few days later, Pineau went for her first Nose in a day with Vaill, completing it in 12 hours, 42 minutes. Kelleghan still wasn’t entirely convinced. “When Laura said she hadn’t led the first four pitches and had given up the lead at the wide crack, part of my brain was like, she’s not risky enough,” she says. “But at least she was a personality fit.” By this, Kelleghan meant that Pineau could at least be goofy—a must-have attribute in a partner for a 24-hour suffer fest.

In October 2024, Pineau finished up her hardest trad project, Greenspit (5.14a/5.13d), in Switzerland, then flew to Yosemite to meet Kelleghan. They warmed up on the North Face (5.11c) of the Rostrum, where Pineau sent the Alien Finish (5.12b), then switched into speed climbing on the first eight pitches of the Nose to Dolt Tower, also known as a “Dolt run.” Kelleghan carefully evaluated Pineau’s ability. “I was kind of metering her against my times to Dolt,” said Kelleghan, who estimates someone’s “Dolt time” to be one-fourth of their expected NIAD time. “We were both at Dolt in two hours and 30 minutes. That’s decently fast, and it was only her third time leading it.”

Kelleghan realized that Pineau, as the stronger free climber, could lead the first block of the Nose. “She’s fast enough, and it’s November,” she remembers thinking. Spring, the ideal time to send the Triple, was just a few short months away. She finally had a partner who could dedicate all her time to this goal. “If we’re going to do it, the commitment time is now.”

IV. “Get That 24”

At 7:15 a.m. on June 8, Kelleghan and Pineau sprinted into the El Cap picnic area and dropped their harnesses outside the parked van. The gray light was slowly sharpening, but this time, there were only a handful of friends, rather than crowds. Both Pineau’s red leggings and Kelleghan’s pink ones were smeared with black dirt. With tousled braids and solemn faces, they knelt on the ground and tossed gear back and forth into piles. It was the start of their second and final transition.

They’d spent the entire night climbing the Nose. “The spiders in the Great Roof were horrendous,” Kelleghan said later. “You shine your headlamp up to see where to place your piece, and you see their eyes.” Pineau raged through the first four pitches, but still, each climber had added 10 minutes to her block. The extra 40 minutes they’d earned from Watkins was now just 20. They were on track to finish before 24 hours, but only if they didn’t bonk.

Kelleghan looked openly worried. Pineau had stopped smiling, but hadn’t changed her tone. “Yeah, girl, we’re going to get that 24 [hours],” she said, throwing her newly racked harness back into the van. There was zero doubt in her voice, but the time pressure was palpable. Pineau passed Kelleghan, who was carefully putting in contacts, and shot her a reminder: “Five minutes. We’ve got to get going.”

V. Like an Ultramarathon

The week before her Triple attempt, Kelleghan sits on a checkered kitchen table in her friend’s house near Yosemite Village. She hands me a spiral notebook full of topo drawings in ballpoint pen. Her notes could rival a private detective’s. One page, which summarizes her and Pineau’s second training lap on Mount Watkins, lists seven data points about the weather, four remarks on clothing, and 12 additional conclusions, including: Only black totem on pitch three: fix rope over bush, Put oval carabiner on higher 11b bolt with tat, and Extend pitons on pitch five.

Compared to other Triple teams, Kelleghan says that she and Pineau are much more data-obsessed. From tracking their sleep quality with COROS watches to measuring out their electrolyte calories, they wanted to use any small optimization they could to be faster.

When the team arrived in the Valley around April 12, they had exactly two months to prepare for the Triple.  “We’re training for it like an ultramarathon,” Kelleghan said, explaining that ultramarathon runners, apparently, don’t practice for ultras by running regular marathons, but instead prepare with shorter laps. Their favorite ultrarunner is Courtney Dauwalter, whose film they watched at the No Man’s Land Festival. “Courtney says, every minute you spend in the pain cave, you’re making it more comfortable,” Kelleghan observed. “We’re joking that we’re adding couches to the pain cave.”

The plan was to practice each formation until they could get their Watkins time to five hours, Nose time down to seven hours, and Half Dome time to six hours. Then, they’d take a full week of rest and go for all three at once. They’d skip the Double, opting to save energy and rely on the support of friends and family to keep energy levels high.

But it wasn’t only the encroaching summer weather constricting their timeline. Kelleghan had recently developed turf toe: a sprain of the main joint in the big toe, in her right foot. “It’s getting worse every day because we’re not taking breaks,” she said. “Climbing chimneys on Half Dome and hiking down are antagonizing it.” If they couldn’t get ready for the Triple quickly, each extra week of training would hurt Kelleghan more.

The first few weeks were brutal. They started with the Nose, which Kelleghan had the most dialed from years of NIADs. “I think I burned 1,000 calories just telling Laura Nose beta,” says Kelleghan. Their first April 19 attempt took 12 hours 53 minutes and was freezing cold. Five days later, they got their time down to under nine hours, but Pineau got emotional trying to work a slippery groove on pitch three. Then, on April 30, Pineau got food poisoning for a full week.

By April 30, they’d only done two Nose runs together in one month, and were nowhere near ready for the Triple. “Compared to the boys, they’ve been hitting their goal times on the first and second attempt, and we haven’t,” said Pineau. On May 5, with heavy winds and a not-quite-recovered Pineau, the duo hit seven hours 39 minutes on the Nose—closer, but still not goal time.

They switched over to Mount Watkins, heading up on May 8, Pineau’s birthday. After a nine-hour, three-minute scouting sesh, Kelleghan surprised Pineau by sneaking up a candle, which she stuck in a mini Scratch bar on the summit. After the second Watkins lap—five hours 57 minutes—Kelleghan and Pineau celebrated being three hours faster, but realized they needed to try it again to get more dialed. A third attempt on May 15 resulted in Pineau’s first whipper: a 10-foot fall onto a black totem that protected another 60 feet of airtime.

“I screamed a lot,” said Pineau. “It made this day really shaky to me. My mindset is to never fall.” Kelleghan explains that Watkins is particularly slippery and glassy. Pineau fell at one of the safest places possible, but still whipped 10 feet with rope stretch. “I knew it was bad because she took the whip and then the next pitch, a 5.10, she usually frees,” says Kelleghan. “But this pitch, she was yelling curse words in French and not freeing it.” But their time was still faster: five hours, 15 minutes, nearly within range.

Finally, the team tried Half Dome. The first lap on May 19 was “just sussing” the moves, according to Kelleghan. They came in at nine hours, four minutes, but weren’t worried; it was a practice run. The second lap presented the real speed test. Pineau took a “daisy whip,” where she fell onto her own adjustable tethers before the rope caught her, after a .1/.2 offset cam popped out. Even so, the day was a success: the women climbed Half Dome in six hours, five minutes, just five minutes past their goal time. It was the closest they’d gotten to their target number on any formation yet.

To reduce their times on the Nose and Watkins, Kelleghan and Pineau took one more practice lap on each, eventually landing at seven hours, five minutes for the Nose (acceptable), and four hours, 47 minutes for Watkins (better than acceptable). Though they still hoped to shave off a bit more time on Watkins to get a buffer early in the 24-hour push. After the final Watkins practice lap, their COROS watches showed both women at 4% recovery. Kelleghan based her recovery schedule around those numbers. By the time they started their Triple attempt, she wanted the watch to show 100%.

Some Triple teams take 30-minute breaks between formations; others head up knowing they’ll have plenty of time to spare. But if Kelleghan and Pineau could repeat their best performances on each formation in a single push, it would still barely be enough. “We’re right at 24 hours if we have our current times and the transitions go perfectly with no rests,” said Kelleghan. Both clarified that their main goal was to do the Triple in a single push, and getting sub-24 would be a secondary goal. But the idea of barely missing the 24-hour standard set by the speed climbers before them was too uncomfortable to dwell on.

VI. A Little Rain Won’t Stop Us

Thunder rolled through Yosemite as Kelleghan and Pineau had made their way up Mount Watkins. They had started at 3:58 p.m. on June 7, which meant that their 24-hour cut-off time would be 3:58 p.m. on June 8. The 28 members of the Triple Queens Support Team group chat wondered if thunder meant they’d bail, but a selfie from Pineau resolved all questions. “A little rain won’t stop us,” she messaged, then shut off her phone. By the summit, they’d beaten their personal best by 40 minutes, winning a critical buffer for the next two walls.

The thunder disappeared for the nighttime Nose ascent, but returned for Half Dome. By the time the team had made it up Half Dome’s Death Slabs approach, which took just one hour, 30 minutes, they’d each hiked nearly 18 miles and climbed 5,200 vertical feet.

Kelleghan was feeling beat—and panicked. “It was my worst nightmare,” she said. “We’re going to be really close to 24.” Technically, it was only 9:40 a.m., and they still had six hours to summit Half Dome. They’d previously done it in six hours, five minutes, but that was when they were fresh, not after two consecutive walls and no sleep.

Kelleghan still felt nervous as they simul-climbed through the first block, but when she got through her section of aid pitches, Pineau told her, “That was the fastest you’ve ever done them.”

“Sweet! Cool!” shouted Kelleghan, revitalized.

Later, Pineau admitted that she lied. “I was definitely pumping [her] up a little bit,” she says. “I wasn’t actually tracking [her] time.”

At the base of the next Half Dome checkpoint—the chimneys—Pineau told Kelleghan, “If you do your block in one and a half hours, and I do mine in one and a half hours, we’ll make it.” Kelleghan gave herself a stern pep talk: “I was like, ‘Any energy I have left now goes to the chimneys.’” She channeled her focus, ignored her burning feet, and blazed up the rock.

When Pineau began to lead her final block to the summit, she asked Kelleghan to give her regular time checks at each pitch. By the last pitch, they had 30 minutes left, and Kelleghan realized something she hadn’t considered before: They were actually going to do it.

The giddiness set in. Lightning was flashing around her, but there was nothing she could do—mentally or physically—except jug the final fixed line to her three-year dream.

When Kelleghan caught Pineau at the final anchor, Pineau pressed her stopwatch, and the timer froze at 23 hours and 36 minutes. The two collapsed into a hug, still tied in. Kelleghan found tears streaming down her face. They had made history together.

“It doesn’t feel real yet,” said Kelleghan that night, back in Yosemite Village. She was lying cross-legged on a carpeted floor, while Pineau smiled at her from across the room. “It’s been so many years in the making.”

And the pain cave? She laughed. “It’s like a mansion now.”