I used to think of rock climbers as thrill-seeking hipsters who risked their lives in ever more dangerous situations just to keep the adrenaline flowing.

No more.

Last week, I tuned into the coverage of Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson, two Americans who were attempting to free climb El Capitan’s seemingly impossible “Dawn Wall” route.

The so-called “coverage” was pretty thin: a shaky Internet feed, minus audio, shot from the valley below El Capitan with an extreme telephoto lens. There were intermittent freeze-frames; periods of blackout whenever the lone camera’s battery needed changing; and no color commentary.

Despite the low production values, the footage was riveting. This was the last of nineteen brutal days spent on the rock face. Caldwell and Jorgeson had resolved to climb all 31 pitches — sections which correspond to the maximum practical length of a climbing rope — in one continuous push, which meant climbing by day and sleeping most nights on lightweight platforms dangling in mid-air.

There are many ways to climb El Capitan, the granite monolith in Yosemite National Park made famous by Ansel Adams’ moody photographs, but Caldwell and Jorgeson were only interested in the “Dawn Wall” route, which, until last week, was considered to be impossible to free climb.

A quick technical distinction is in order. El Capitan has been climbed countless times over the past few decades by men and women using advanced rope techniques. When the climber would encounter a section of rock so steep, or so smooth, that a human being simply couldn’t gain purchase on the surface, ropes, secured by hardware drilled into the rock face overhead, would be used to bypass the unclimbable stretch.

Caldwell and Jorgeson refused to admit there was such a thing as an “unclimbable stretch.” Season after season, they returned to the Dawn Wall to work the problem stretches, until they felt they had solutions for all 31 pitches — some of which are so difficult as to defy the traditional ratings system that measures “degree of difficulty.” In fact, most the pitches on the Dawn Wall are so difficult that to “send,” or successfully climb, a single one of them would be the culmination of most climbers’ careers.

But here were two climbers who set their sights not only on free climbing all 31 of these seemingly impossible pitches, using ropes not to help them up the rock face, but only to save them from certain death should they slip — and who were determined to do it all in one go.

They’d tried it before and failed, and there were moments on this attempt when it seemed that only one of them might succeed. But there they were last Wednesday, close to the summit, with only a few pitches left, and the most difficult ones long behind them.

Media interest in their assault on the Dawn Wall had been building, with many experts describing their ambition to send all 31 pitches, one after the other, as the single most difficult climb in history.

Which is why I was a little surprised when I navigated to the NBC News website to watch the live feed. If this was the greatest feat in rock climbing history, why was the coverage limited to a shaky camcorder nearly a mile away? The footage was raw and unedited. This point was driven home when one of the climbers turned away from the rock face — in other words, facing the camera — and fumbled with something at his waist. There followed a slender stream, distorted by the winds whipping along the rock face: he was peeing!

I’d tuned in thinking I was going to see a pair of mountain goats scampering to the summit, but what actually transpired had more in common with a space walk than a scamper. Everything happened slowly and with much deliberation. Most of the time, the bodies of the climbers were practically still as they prepared their equipment or studied the wall in front of them for finger and toe holds. They frequently reached for the chalk bags dangling at the small of their backs; the chalk dust absorbs sweat and reduces hand-punishing friction. Slowly, deliberately, steadily, like spiders ascending an attic wall, they placed each hand, each foot. Then, all of a sudden, when there were no holds nearby, there’d be an explosive move, a catlike “dyno,” and a body would float momentarily in open space.

It was a privilege to watch these two explorers reach the goal they’d been chasing for so long. I don’t pretend to understand the trials they endured: the physical punishment, the doubt, the separation from their young families. But I do identify with their single-mindedness of purpose. For whatever reason, they set an impossible thing as their task, and, step by step, set about achieving it.