Yosemite Climber Emily Harrington Lucky to Be Alive After Fall Off El Capitan

A world champion climber is lucky to be alive after falling while trying to scale El Capitan on the Golden Gate Route in under 24 hours. 

Emily Harrington, 33, on Monday was free climbing Yosemite’s El Capitan, which is 3,200 feet of sheer granite. She was climbing in the dark, in the early hours of the morning, with just a single safety rope between her and disaster.

Harrington had climbed about 150 feet when she lost her grip. 

"It wasn't a moment of panic," Harrington told "Good Morning America." "It wasn't a moment of surprise. Honestly, it was a very calm moment. In my head, it was just kind of like, 'OK, I'm falling. This is happening.'"

Harrington's climbing partner, record-setting climber Alex Honnold, was holding onto the safety rope that he said saved her. 

"I was holding the other end of the rope and she unfortunately slipped and hit some things as she fell," Honnold, famously climbed El Capitan with no ropes in the 2018 Oscar-winning documentary “Free Solo," told “GMA.”

"But ultimately the safety equipment caught her, as we expect it to," he said. 

Incredibly, Harrington was not seriously injured, but was left a nasty rope burn mark on her neck.

She posted about the ordeal on Instagram, writing: “I had an accident yesterday on El Cap. I’m banged up but gonna be ok thankfully. Not much to say except I took a bad fall and pin balled a bit then somehow hit the rope w my neck.”

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