“Climbing has been this passport to some really remote destinations that I never would have seen were it not for climbing,” Sasha DiGiulian says. One dramatic example is Yosemite Valley, viewed from roughly 2,000 feet in the air while hanging from El Capitan by a harness.

In December 2025, 33-year-old DiGiulian became the first woman to climb El Capitan’s Platinum Wall. The ascent required 23 days on the wall, including nine days holed up during a torrential storm. It added to a long list of “First Female Ascents” across far-flung places—from French Polynesia to Madagascar—establishing her reputation for pursuing pioneering routes in remote corners of the world.

DiGiulian spoke after returning from the climb about living on a cliff for weeks and what completing the route might mean for future women climbers.

Platinum Wall, she says, felt like a local crown jewel. Yosemite is one of the most beautiful places she’s visited—even after traveling to more than 50 countries—and the wall had been a goal she’d worked on for three years. She wasn’t sure she could do it until the season she felt prepared to try.

The climb involved a lot of unknowns, especially weather and conditions. DiGiulian lived on the side of the cliff in a portaledge—a four-by-six-foot tent that hangs vertically—at more than 2,000 feet above ground for 23 days. Nine of those days were during a severe winter storm that brought more rain to Yosemite that November than the park had seen since 1973. When people later asked about the storm, she’d reply, “Yeah, I know, because I was in this tent…”

Those storm days were not entertaining. Her main tasks were keeping gear dry and staying warm: wrapping wet clothes around her body to use her body heat to dry them, rotating damp layers, cooking freeze-dried meals on a jet boil, and snacking on bars from her company, Send Bars, which she used as on-wall product testing. It was a very minimal existence.

Even after the storm passed, challenges remained. The Platinum Wall is roughly a 3,000-foot monolithic granite structure composed of many distinct pitches. DiGiulian’s goal was to climb it without falling. Climbing typically relies on dry rock for friction, so when the wall was still soaking wet, she had to overcome a different set of hazards and uncertainties—plus about 400 feet of persistently difficult vertical terrain near the end.

Reaching the top felt like a collection of moments. Her first reaction was laughter—partly at the absurdity of having lived for weeks in a harness without walking—and then a flood of emotion: tears, happiness, gratitude. Living on the wall imposes rules: everything is tied in, even a water bottle, because a dropped object could fall 3,000 feet and endanger someone below. Completing a long-held, audacious goal with her team left her with an intense appreciation for climbing and for life.

DiGiulian hopes the external impact of the ascent matters as much as the personal one. “Climbing is this sport where there’s no gender division—the rock is the rock,” she says. The route doesn’t care about background, appearance, or identity. Still, climbing has a male-dominated history, and when she started she lacked role models. Coming from a city background and into a sport her family didn’t know, she pursued it anyway. That pursuit opened a life of exploration and adventure she hopes will inspire other women and girls who don’t see themselves represented now.

Her broader view is optimistic: she expects continued progress for women across sports, business, and travel. DiGiulian advocates for positivity and solution-oriented thinking as drivers of change. She believes women supporting women—and men supporting women—creates a snowball effect: seeing someone achieve a difficult goal can spark others to try. When she watches another woman climb, she feels encouraged and thinks, “If she can do it, I can do it too.”

Looking ahead, DiGiulian plans to keep climbing and to support the sport’s growth and inclusivity. She sees her Platinum Wall ascent not just as a personal milestone but as a potential spark for the next generation of climbers who will pursue their own wildest goals.

“Climbing has been this passport to some really remote destinations that I never would have seen were it not for climbing,” says Sasha DiGiulian. One case in point? Yosemite Valley, as seen from some 2,000 feet in the air—while hanging from the face of El Capitan by a harness.

Yosemite’s El Capitan is the world’s largest granite monolith. In December 2025, 33-year-old DiGiulian became the first woman to ascend its Platinum Wall, an undertaking that required 23 days—nine of which were spent waiting out a torrential rainstorm—to complete. It’s not the first time she has gone—quite literally—where no woman has gone before. From French Polynesia to Madagascar, she ranks among climbers with the highest number of “First Female Ascents,” meaning she was the first woman to complete a particular route. She is especially known for pursuing these climbs in remote, far-flung corners of the world.

We spoke with DiGiulian, finally rested after her adrenaline-spiking undertaking, about the greater part of a month she spent on the side of a cliff—and the experience of charting a new path that she hopes will inspire the next generation of women climbers.

You recently became the first woman to ascend the Platinum Wall in Yosemite. For those of us who will never experience that type of climb, what does it feel like up there?

Platinum Wall is one of those climbs that is right in our backyard. Yosemite National Park is one of the most beautiful places that I’ve ever been to, and that’s after traveling to over 50 different countries around the world. I think it’s a great reminder that travel doesn’t need to be in some far off remote location to be incredible. Platinum Wall was this climb that I’ve been working on for the last three years, this big crown jewel of my climbing career. I never knew if I could do it or not. But in this last season, I felt prepared enough to go for it.

What we experienced was a lot of the unknown, which is not atypical for climbing, but weather and conditions play such a big factor in these bigger experiences of being on the wall. I ended up living on the side of the cliff at over 2,000 feet up vertically in what’s called a portaledge, which is a four-foot-by-six-foot tent structure that hangs vertically off the side of a cliff face, for 23 days. Nine of that was because of a really bad winter storm that, from my understanding, swept through most of California, but Yosemite National Park this November had more rain than it historically has had since 1973.

Some time after, I was on a trip to Tahoe where this person was telling me about the rain in California during that storm, and I was, Yeah, I know, because I was in this tent…

…a tent on the side of a massive cliff, to be clear. So, you were able to just hang out there for nine days with no issues?

It’s not the most exciting. There’s nothing to do. My main sense of entertainment during those nine days was keeping things dry, staying as warm as I could. So that involved taking my wet clothes and wrapping them around my body so that I could use body heat to dry them, and rotating. And then I had a jet boil, which enabled me to cook my freeze-dried meals, and I had bars from Send Bars, which is my company. So that was great to product-test up there. It’s a very minimal existence on the wall.

I was also just waiting to be able to finish the climb, which was full of its own uncertainties, including the fact that there was still 400 feet of really challenging vertical terrain to get through. My goal was to climb the Platinum Wall on El Capitan without falling, and every single pitch that makes up the 3,000-foot monolithic granite structure is a different challenge. Climbers typically are climbing on dry surfaces, because that maximizes friction—but by the time the storm passed, the wall was soaking wet, and so that was a different challenge that I had to get over.

Can you describe that moment to me, when you reached the top—when you’d completed it and achieved your goal? How did it feel?

The moment was a collection of moments, to be honest, and I’ve done a lot of reflecting in the weeks since. My first reaction was just laughter, because how ridiculous is it to not have walked for 23 days, and have only been hanging in a harness? Gravity is such a bizarre thing. You know, when you’re on the wall and living there, you can’t drop things. Everything is tied in, even your water bottle, because if you drop it, it’s going 3,000 feet to the valley floor, and could potentially be a fatal accident for someone at the base. Then there’s the emotion of, like, I can’t believe that this dream has come true; the surge of tears and happiness and just gratitude for the opportunity to have been there and to have been able to go after this wild, audacious goal and actually believe in myself and my team. To be able to complete it. It was a pretty unparalleled feeling. It made me grateful for my sport and for life in general, to be able to provide those opportunities, to be able to have that intense of a feeling.

How do you think about the external impact of this achievement, and what it means for others?

Climbing is this sport where there’s no gender division. The course is the course, and that is the rock. The rock doesn’t care about anything: who you are, what you look like, what your background is, whether the weather is going to be in your favor or not. It’s just there, and it holds the test of time, like all of the historic ascents in climbing throughout the last centuries. Gear improves, the training that goes into us as climbers progresses.

Granted, climbing has such a male-dominated background, and when I started climbing, I didn’t have a person that I wanted to emulate. I came from a city background. I learned about this sport, even though my parents and family didn’t really know anything about it, but I loved it, and I pursued it, and it’s enabled me to live this really incredible lifestyle of exploration and adventure and living by curiosity. I hope that me, carving out my own path in this way, can serve as inspiration for other women and girls who may not see themselves in what exists right now, but have the courage and the determination and the confidence to think: I can do it too. I can go after my wildest dreams, whether it’s climbing or something else. You don’t have to have a certain background to go after it.

What are your goals for the year ahead—both for your own climbing, and the sport on the whole?

I think that women’s progression across sport, across C-suite positions, across travel, is just going to continue to grow in its independence. I am really optimistic, dare I say in this current climate, where we have so much reason to pull out negativity. My mantra has always been you don’t affect any sort of change and progression without positivity and without a solution-oriented outlook. When I look to what women achieved in recent years, and what is possible in the year coming up, I think that women supporting women is super important. Men supporting women is really important. Feeling like we can share our stories and come up with these collective experiences that inspire each other. When I see a woman do something in climbing, I feel inspired because I think, Oh, if she can do it, I can do it too. That’s where my optimism comes from—achievements can have a snowball effect.