On day three, waking to a severe hangover and way too many sore muscles, I clung to the portaledge straps to hold myself up.

"Russ, it's your lead."

This was probably true, and if it wasn't, I hoped he wouldn't remember.

Russ looked about as haggard as I did and, luckily, showed no sign of wanting to discuss whose lead it actually might have been, or anything else for that matter. Beth, on the other hand, was rustling around on her ledge and debating the possibility of doing one or two extra pitches today and maybe topping out tomorrow. I pretended not to hear her.

We were a little over halfway up the Zodiac, the most popular trade route on El Cap. The last wall Russ and I had been on together, two months before, was a new route on Baffin Island. In Russ, I'd discovered the perfect wall partner. He laughs almost as much as I do, can endure hours of girl talk (even if I'm the only girl talking), exists happily on three meals of peanut butter a day, listens to Bad Religion, and actually wants to lead A4 death pitches.

And Beth is one of my best friends, and this was her very first big wall. I'd spent most of the previous day privately worrying about her pain level and potential for injury, asking myself if we should continue or go down before the wall steepened. But despite having no use of any muscles below her top abdominal, she was doing just fine.

As Russ stepped into his aiders, I swallowed about half a bottle of Tylenol and started pawing through ropes and stuff sacks. So far, our system on the Zodiac had been to start climbing and then make it up as we went. I'd gone along on Sean O'Neill's paraplegic one-day ascent of a desert tower the year before, but none of us had ever done a big wall in this style.

Mark Wellman pioneered paraplegic climbing 10 years ago when he climbed El Cap, but by no means is this a standardized type of climbing. The systems work differently for everyone; friends at Climb Moab had designed Beth's harness specifically for her. Despite her custom-built rig and many training sessions on fixed lines on ski lift towers and in Eldorado Canyon, she was still making adjustments on the wall.

But as always on a big wall, we were finally starting to fall into a routine. One person would lead and haul, while the other helped Beth into her chest and waist harness and "leg burrito." A portaledge had to be hauled and set up while she ascended her line, doing hundreds of pull-ups on a jumar bar, so that she could immediately get out of her harness when she reached the next belay. As Beth jugged, one person could clear off extra gear from the last anchor, clean the pitch, and, if necessary, hold her line out from the wall.

A major problem with Beth's jumar system was its extreme inefficiency when the wall was anything less than completely overhanging. On the lower vertical pitches of the Zodiac, unless Russ or I hefted her fixed line and manually held it out so it was free hanging, she could gain only a few inches for every pull-up she did. We were all finding this technique extremely inconvenient.

But now that we'd eaten some of the weight and the wall was steepening, Russ and I no longer had to do two-man spacehauls (a technique for hauling the team's bags) on each pitch, which was halving our workload. This was lucky as, quite frankly, the two of us were getting worked. This ascent of the Zodiac was proving to be the most technical and demanding big wall that either of us had ever done. Happily, the steepness was helping Beth, too. Instead of scraping up the side of the wall, she was bobbing up each line like a mermaid in the sky, her trademark long braid dangling behind her.

As the day passed, my hangover mercifully subsided. It felt like we were getting closer. Our cars had become visible below the trees beside El Cap meadow. I could see Beth's blue Eurovan with her handbike on the rear rack.

We'd been working toward this ascent since Beth broke her back a year and a half before. One of my best girlfriends, she had been a favorite Indian Creek partner. Our friendship began as the standard relationship between any two obsessive female athletes. We'd call each other from payphones to talk about life, men and upcoming trips, send postcards and silly presents, and meet every few months at a sunny crag.

Before we met, Beth had made the switch from biathlon racing, a unique sport combining cross country ski racing and rifle marksmanship, to cross country mountain bike racing. She had also developed a passion for rock climbing. Beth was remarkably nonchalant, or maybe just humble, about her history as an elite athlete. As time went by, I began to understand just how good she really was.

Having competed in biathlon in the '92 and '94 Olympics, as well as seven World Championships, Beth's move to professional mountain biking was seamless. She found herself starting at the bottom of her new sport, without the sponsorship support that her competitors had. Still, she managed to train, make ends meet, and, by 1997, earn a national 2nd-place ranking, with the goal of being first the following season. The mountain biking media loved to run stories on Beth Coats, the underdog blazing to victory, and sponsorships began to roll her way.

On occasional "rest days" spent climbing, Beth had in three years become solid, leading 5.11 on gear and 5.12 on bolts. With the enthusiasm of a new climber, she'd call to tell me about leading every pitch on the Naked Edge, climbing her first Diamond route, or redpointing a 12b sport route - "and oh, yeah, I won the race last weekend."

I started to have ideas about doing big routes together some day, but Beth's racing and training scheduled was far too intense to indulge in a lot of climbing time. The most she could manage was the occasional half day and weekends at the crag. Her only regret in life was that she didn't have more time to climb — until that afternoon at Eldorado when she lost the use of all her muscles below her top ab, and with them, her years of work as a biathlete and mountain biker.

Incredibly, a year and a half after the accident, we were on the side of El Cap, doing Beth's first big wall. As I led a pitch, Beth turned to Russ in delight and said, "You know what? I haven't even thought about being paralyzed all day!"

"Then it's all worth it," he replied, smiling.

When among friends, hard work always feels like play. People watching us from the base told us about hearing half-hour fits of hysterical laughter floating down from the route. And why would this wall be any different? The best part about walling is its fundamental silliness.

In the middle of the fifth day when Beth clipped her adjustable daisies over the lip and pulled onto the summit of El Cap, there was no doubt that it was all worth it. She'd done several thousand pull-ups to get there. We threw the gear any which way, snapped photos, and gazed at Half Dome in the distance. It seemed crazy that we'd actually done it - or at least, most of it. We still had to get down.

How to get down had posed the most vexing logistical problem in our planning. Initially Beth had considered coming in from Tuolomne Meadows with her hand bike, stashing it on the top of El Cap on the eight-mile long trail, and being carried up to the bike from the top of the Zodiac in order to ride down the trail herself. More research revealed that the trail wasn't smooth enough for a handbike descent. Wellman had used a mule to descend the trail, but given Beth's level of injury, that sounded like a rough ride. The typical descent route, the East Ledges, would definitely be the fastest way, but the going is so steep and treacherous that many climbers have an epic on the way down. We couldn't afford to do anything sketchy with Beth. We needed the fastest, safest descent plan we could get. Clearly this was a case of finding the right team for the job.

At dawn, fresh from a 24-hour linkup of El Cap, Half Dome and the Sentinel, Dean Potter and "Crazy Tim" O'Neill arrived to start the final adventure. Being the strongest and fastest climber we know, Dean was elected team mule. Timmy had led the last paraplegic climb I'd participated in, climbing Castleton Tower in Moab with his brother, Sean. Perhaps because he himself seems to have the energy of 10 people and to live under some magical force field, through sheer strength of personality, Timmy can basically get anyone to do anything.

Spotted by Timmy, Dean had carried Beth to the base of the Zodiac in a Kelty backpack with some constantly revised straps to hold her comfortably and holes cut out for her legs. Now Dean and Timmy arrived at the top of El Cap with the Kelty and a plush breakfast of fresh-squeezed orange juice, yogurt, cinnamon rolls, chocolate, and a whole melon.

For the next three hours, Dean and Beth maneuvered down the East Ledges through manzanita tunnels, granite slabs, scree patches, fixed rappels, talus fields, and finally, the last stretch of dirt trail through the woods and down to the valley floor. Dean moved more like a mountain goat than a mule, and this was the first time throughout the entire adventure I'd seen Beth look scared. But then, being strapped to the back of a 6'5" guy descending that terrain would scare anyone. We all knew full well that falling was not an option. Timmy distracted Beth with bizarre tales and impromptu narration of the Dean Potter East Ledges Workout Video -- "Okay, Ladieees! Grab a 90-pound paralyzed girl and a rap line! Let's get those ATCs moving! And one and two and, come on girls, pass that knot!" -- until we thought she might hurt herself laughing so hard.

When we reached the Manure Pile parking lot, Beth's tandem bike was waiting. Much to her delight, Dean and Timmy had ridden it through the Valley to speed up their triple linkup, and had simply pedaled over to come fetch us down the East Ledges. Never one for an undramatic finish, Beth set off to ride over to El Cap Meadow with Dean in order to retrieve a car.

Before noon, we were all back at the meadow where we'd started only five days before, this time surrounded by piles of stinking wall gear instead of clean wall gear. As Russ and I gingerly began sorting through the piles, people circled around Beth to congratulate her. It seemed that all of Yosemite knew she'd been on El Cap and what she'd done. Mark Wellman happened to be in the Valley and was amazed to hear that Beth was doing this climb so soon after her accident, and in such a short time on the wall.

Frantic organizing gave way to lounging in the meadow. Beth and I gazed up at the Zodiac together, this time with the eyes of climbers who'd just been there.

"You know Steph," Beth said, "I don't feel like that climb was about me or any one person. It was about just being on El Cap with friends and the five of us all helping each other."

"I know," I said.

"And I can't stop thinking about how there's no way we could have done it without each person's abilities. If you and Russ weren't such good wall climbers and partners, and if Dean and Timmy weren't so strong and fast and funny, there's no way this all could have happened."

"And if you hadn't been able to do four thousand pull-ups," I said.

"And if Kevin and Barry hadn't sewn my burrito, and if my brother hadn't gotten me my ATV so I could go to the ski area to practice jumaring, and if Mike hadn't done the first ascent of Lift Tower 7 with me, and if Christian hadn't driven out to Yosemite with me, and…."

Looking up at El Cap, I smiled, seeing something even bigger and prouder than a huge lump of granite — the energy that Beth's friends brought to her ascent of it.

— Steph Davis, MountainZone.com Correspondent