Mescalito live on El Capitan by Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson

Internet has revolutionised, quite literally, everything. In our vertical sphere, it has completely changed the way we find out about events from the summits and the crags, at times even real-time, while climbers are still untying their knots or alpinists are still descending to the safety of their base camps... This obviously means that the way some people take to the mountains has changed, too, and more and more people - not only extreme athletes - are embracing these technologies to share their adventures up high.

There have been many beautiful examples in the past, such as the 1999 American expedition comprised of Alex Lowe, Mark Synnott and Jared Ogden to the Great Trango Tower which was followed live with graphics, technology and a level of interactivity which would be considered cutting-edge even today. Just think, after enduring the hardships on the wall each day, they then answered all the emails! What is even more amazing is that this all took place over a decade ago, when internet was still embryonic.

That same year the late Tomas Humar checked in online with his odyssey up the South Face of Dhaulagiri, a climb which had record access statistics with viewers not only in his home Slovenia but from across the globe. A decade has passed since then and in the meantime there have been many other noteworthy examples and, importantly, technology has made giant, unrecognisable leaps forward: all one needs now is to send a simple sms or photo to be online on a personal blog, facebook or twitter.

At present two exceptional American climbers, Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson, are experimenting with these technologies. The two are on El Capitan in Yosemite with their sights set on a project they'd started last autumn, a free line with unites the famous Mescalito with New Dawn, two cult routes to the right of the famous The Nose.

For those who don't know this duo, Caldwell is certainly one of the most expert big wallers in the States, having climbed almost all the routes on El Capitan (worth mentioning is his mammoth free ascent of The Nose and Freerider in a single day in 2005), while Kevin Jorgeson is a highly talented boulderer who obviously has a penchant for new challenges: this one has been defined by some as being a project for the next decade.

This might be a slight exaggeration, but while some routes such as The Nose and Salathe follow a series of moderately difficult pristine cracks to reach a few extremely difficult crux pitches (valley expert Chris McNamara estimates that 90% of the climbing on these routes is easier than 7a), the exact opposite holds true for Mescalito, where perhaps 80% of the climbing is harder than 7b+ and at least four pitches are reckoned to be above 8b.

As mentioned, the two had worked hard in October 2009 but snow then stopped play. Spring has now arrived and tomorrow the two plan to ascend the fixed ropes to explore the four remaining unclimbed pitches, and as they ascend Jorgeson will send short texts and photos directly from the wall from his IPhone. If you're interested in keeping up-to-date about their daily progress check out this link, and in the meantime enjoy this brief video which shows one of the crux sections on the route, a massive sideways dyno which is practically inconceivable at ground level. We don't dare think what it's like 500m above the valley!

Mescalito Project, El Capitan