An American climber has become the first woman to free-climb El Capitan’s longest route, a journey that took more than three weeks and has been completed by only a handful of climbers.

It took Sasha DiGiulian, 33, a world-renowned climber from Colorado, 23 days to ascend the roughly 3,000-foot wall in California’s Yosemite National Park, some of which were spent suspended against the wall’s ledge waiting out a period of rain, snow and wind.

DiGiulian is one of just a few climbers to summit El Capitan via the Platinum route, a goal she’d been eyeing for a while, according to an interview with CBS News .

“For the last few years I’ve been so committed to this specific line … This climb kind of consumed me,” she said.

DiGiulian was accompanied by her climbing partner, Elliot Faber, and

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