While I was visiting the American Alpine Club museum, a unknown person came in and dropped off photos of the summit celebration as Warren Harding and Dean Caldwell topped out on the climb.
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​History: Planning on just 12 days to ascend the route, the two actually spent 27 days forging the line, drilling 330 bolts and despite being low on rations, waiting out a four-day storm and famously refusing a rescue from the Park Service. October 23, - Nov 18, 1970
The ascent, took 27 days, involved 330 holes drilled for the 2800 foot climb, a holes-to-feet ratio never before seen and never seen again in Yosemite. A huge rescue effort was organized eventually in earlier November as the climbing party was hit by early winter storms and had to cease their activities for days at a time thus causing panic amongst the NPS staff, especially as more and more reporters arrived in the Valley. Although an actual rescue never was required and was refused, a few dozen people were put on the ready, in many cases at some expense. And the news people thrilled to all this activity while they waited for a top-out or a failure of some sort or other.
On the second ascent of the route Royal Robbins was on a mission to show Harding that he really didn't need the amount of bolts needed to ascend the route, so he joined up with Don Lauria and purposely ripped out the majority of the bolts on the first three pitches. This story about the ascent, and a interview with Royal Robbins is in the book "Vertical World of Yosemite" by Galen Rowell, a must read book for sure!! Royal in the interview stated that the piton and hook work that Harding did to achieve the first ascent was incredible. Don stated that he was terrified watching Royal taking so many chances while Don was the belayer.