Father of boy, 8, who’s record-breaking climb of El Capitan was called a ‘hoax’ calls critics ‘evil’

The father of a boy who climbed Yosemite’s 3,000-foot El Capitan has resisted critics who said the boy isn’t quite the youngest to ever climb the daunting rock face.

Critics have accused Joe Baker of setting up a ‘publicity hoax’ around the climb, saying he ramped up media attention for his son Sam’s climb while misleading the public about the nature of the ‘record-breaking’ feat.

Sam, a second-grader from Colorado, and his father completed the ascent of El Capitan on Saturday to a chorus of headlines calling the ascent a “historic” event and hailing Sam as the youngest person to ever climb the daunting peak.

But many in the climbing community raised their eyebrows at the headlines, noting that Sam wasn’t actually climbing the rock face in the strict sense, but instead climbed with previously rigged ropes using a scaling device called a rope clamp.

Baker hit back at the critics, pointing out that the arguments against his son’s performance felt “semantic,” as well as pointing out numerous other widely accepted records achieved by rope climbing.

Stealing this from Sam is so sick. It’s a bad thing because he accentuated every foot of that wall,” Baker told DailyMail.com

Baker told DailyMail.com that he never thought twice about using the word “climb” in interviews before he and Sam climbed El Capitan.

“The word climbing — there’s free climbing, there’s ice climbing, there’s solo climbing, there’s rope climbing, I didn’t say any of those things, I just said climbing,” he said. “There’s all this controversy about the language, I’ve never heard of this.”

“They all say Joe used the word ‘climb’, that this thing is a hoax,” he added, noting that in the wake of the kickback he’d decided to always specify that the climb was a ​climb with a rope.

Baker also pointed out that numerous other widely accepted El Capitan records — including the oldest woman’s climb set by free climber Alex Honnold’s mother, Dierdre Wolownick — were made using rope climbs.

He said criticism of his son’s climb came down largely to wording and wondered what other parts of the sport might be challenged in the future.

“It felt very semantic. It’s very funny when you think about it, because who runs this lexicon? Can I call Sam a climber? How far will you go with it?’

Baker said he believes the criticism of his son’s climb may also have come from stars of the sport who are bitter that they are not getting the national recognition that other athletes do.

“In America, people don’t like rock climbing the way they like football and basketball,” he explained. ‘While there are boys in Yosemite’ [doing] these sick climbs and the population never hears about it. Then suddenly a boy jumps through the lines of El Capitan and gets international attention. You can see how unfair that is.’

Baker said he was no happier about that reality than Sam’s critics, and that he wished it weren’t.

“I don’t like it either. I wish people cared more,” he said. “I’m not taking anything away from anyone, but people just don’t like Sam getting all this attention.”

Baker also pushed back on claims in the San Francisco Chronicle that he made the ascent without permission, with the help of so-called pirate guides.

He said the outlet misinterpreted his El Capitan climb with another climb he had previously requested but later abandoned after the park said it would have to do it with a large team of guides.

For the past year, Baker has promoted publicity about his plans to have his son become the youngest person to climb El Capitan.

The duo has been featured in numerous news segments on local and national television and appeared in numerous interviews.

“You only get to El Cap if you’re an expert in the sport,” Baker said of his son in a promotional video on his website promoting the climb.

“That’s what we’re developing is a young man who is an expert in the sport. He can do everything the great climbers can do,’ he said.

While numerous clips showed that Sam — whose family says he’s been climbing since he was able to walk — is an undeniably talented young climber, critics said Baker’s characterization of their mission to climb El Capitan wasn’t entirely fair.

“This is a publicity hoax,” said Tom Evans, a retired teacher who has camped at the base of El Capitan for 28 years with a telephoto lens, documenting the comings and goings of climbers on the cliff.

Evans, 78, told the… San Francisco Chronicle that he watched the Bakers for four days of their ascent and that he never once saw them touch the rock or physically attempt to climb the wall.

Instead, he watched the pair “jump up” — also known as jumaring — involving the process of climbing along lines with a mechanical rope clamp. The process still requires significant physical effort from the climber.

“The guides do everything I’ve seen,” Evans said. “That’s why this isn’t a climb.”

Tommy Caldwell, a well-known El Capitan scaler, also found their claims to a world record questionable.

‘Theoretically I could have said’ [my son] in a transport bag when he was 1 year old and took him there “to claim a record,” Caldwell said.

Shaking off the critics, Baker said he made media rounds praising Sam’s ability — who he says was the best climber his age he’d ever seen — for simply being proud of his son.

‘I am his father, I am very proud of him. I didn’t say he’s going to do the Dawn Wall here,” he said. “You put it in a movie and people say, ‘Well, he’s about to release Free Rider solo. I tried not to be dishonest. I was just proud of my son.’

“I certainly haven’t cheated anyone, and that’s what they’re saying, I deliberately cheated everyone.”