Yosemite in the context of "Madera County, California"

Climbing is the activity of using one's hands, feet, or other parts of the body to ascend a steep topographical object that can range from the world's tallest mountains (e.g. the eight thousanders) to small boulders. Climbing is done for locomotion, sporting recreation, for competition, and is also done in trades that rely on ascension, such as construction and military operations. Climbing is done indoors and outdoors, on natural surfaces (e.g. rock climbing and ice climbing), and on artificial surfaces (e.g. climbing walls and climbing gyms).

Big wall climbing is a form of rock climbing that takes place on both very long and very sheer multi-pitch climbing routes – of at least 6–10 pitches or 300–500 metres in length – that typically require a full day, if not several days, to ascend. Big wall routes are sustained and exposed and the climbers typically remain suspended from the continuously sheer and vertical rock face, even hanging from the face when sleeping, with limited options to sit down or escape unless they abseil down the route—which is itself a complex and risky action. It is therefore considered a physically and mentally demanding form of rock climbing.

Big wall climbing is typically done by pairs of climbers using a traditional climbing style, but with the distinction that the non-lead climber usually ascends by jumaring up a fixed rope to save time and energy. It requires an extensive range of supplies and equipment over and above that of traditional-climbing that is carried in haul bags, such as portaledges, aid climbing equipment, poop tubes, and food and water. Big wall climbing also requires additional climbing techniques such as using pendulums/tension traversing, using aid climbing techniques, employing trail ropes, jumaring, and sometimes the technique of simul climbing.

The Miwok or Miwokan languages (/ˈmiːwɒk/; Northern Sierra Miwok: [míwːɨːk]), also known as Moquelumnan or Miwuk, are a group of endangered languages spoken in central California by the Miwok peoples, ranging from the Bay Area to the Sierra Nevada. There are seven Miwok languages, four of which have distinct regional dialects. There are a few dozen speakers of the three Sierra Miwok languages, and in 1994 there were two speakers of Lake Miwok. The best attested language is Southern Sierra Miwok, from which the name Yosemite originates. The name Miwok comes from the Northern Sierra Miwok word miw·yk meaning 'people.'

The Sierra Nevada Batholith is a large batholith that is approximately 400 miles long and 60-80 miles wide which forms the core of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California, exposed at the surface as granite.

The batholith is composed of many individual masses of rock called plutons, which formed deep underground during separate episodes of magma intrusion, millions of years before the Sierra itself first began to rise. The extremely hot, relatively buoyant plutons, also called plutonic diapirs, intruded through denser, native country rock and sediments, never reaching the surface. At the same time, some magma managed to reach the surface as volcanic lava flows, but most of it cooled and hardened below the surface and remained buried for millions of years.

Aid climbing is a form of rock climbing that uses mechanical devices and equipment, such as aiders (also called 'ladders'), to assist in generating upward momentum. Aid climbing is contrasted with free climbing (in both its traditional or sport free-climbing formats), which can use mechanical equipment only for climbing protection, not to assist in any upward momentum. Aid climbing can involve hammering in permanent pitons and bolts, into which the aiders are clipped, but there is also 'clean aid climbing', which avoids any hammering and uses only temporary removable placements such as spring-loaded camming devices.

While aid climbing traces its origins to the start of all climbing when ladders and pitons were common, its use in single-pitch climbing waned in the early 20th century with the rise of free climbing. At the same time, the Dolomites saw the start of modern "big wall aid climbing", where pioneers like Emilio Comici developed new tools and techniques. Aid climbing's "golden age" was in the 1960s and 1970s on Yosemite's granite big walls led by pioneers such as Royal Robbins and Warren Harding, and later Jim Bridwell, and was where Robbins' ethos of minimal-aid, and Yvon Chouinard's ethos of clean aid climbing, became dominant.