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Mr. Harding, a hard-drinking, fun-loving climber with a slew of firsts under his belt, died on Feb. 27 of liver failure at age 77.
His companion, Alice Flomp of Anderson (Shasta County), said young people loved Mr. Harding, a man they saw as the pioneer of climbing and extreme sports.
"We went on a six-city tour in Canada in 1988, and I was just amazed at all the people who turned out to see his slide shows," Flomp said. "They just loved him."
Mr. Harding began climbing seriously in the 1950s, going after several peaks in the Yosemite Valley.
His main achievement came on Nov. 12, 1958, when he successfully climbed the "nose" of El Capitan.
Mr. Harding, who was 33 at the time, stayed up all of the climb's last night drilling expansion bolts into an overhanging wall, reaching the top just as dawn broke. When someone said he had "conquered" El Capitan, he later wrote:
"It was not at all clear to me who was conqueror and who was conquered. I do recall that El Cap seemed to be in much better condition than I was."
Mr. Harding scored several other first ascents in Yosemite Valley and throughout the Sierra. Among them are the East Face of Washington Column, the South Face of Mount Watkins, the South Face of Half Dome, the Wall of the Early Morning Light (also on El Capitan) and the Porcelain Wall.
He was the first up Keeler Needle and the West Face of Mount Conness in the High Sierra.
Mr. Harding was born in Oakland and grew up in the Sierra County hamlet of Downieville and in Marysville in Yuba County. He spent the war years working in a propeller shop at McClellan Field near Sacramento. After the war, he returned to Marysville and shortly thereafter started working as a surveyor for the state, and later in construction.
In the 1950s, he and another climber, Royal Robbins, ruled the peaks and developed a spirited competition. Robbins was the first to climb Yosemite's Half Dome, which irked Mr. Harding and prompted him to go after El Capitan.
Photographer Galen Rowell, a frequent climbing partner with Mr. Harding, said, "He was known for two things: his incredible endurance and his ability to hold alcohol."
"Warren was the pioneer of big-wall climbing," Rowell said. "When he showed up in Yosemite, climbers were just doing short routes, and he had the vision and the boldness to think he could stay up on a big wall for days or weeks at a time, to take climbing to the next level. A lot of people thought climbing El Capitan would be impossible before he did it."
Flomp and Rowell both remarked on Mr. Harding's free spirit and attitude.
"He lived his life in an uncompromising way," Rowell said. "He never changed his way of living and ethics. He felt everyone should be free to do whatever they wanted on a climb, even though some of his contemporaries -- especially Royal Robbins -- felt differently."
Robbins had only good things to say about his former nemesis.
"He was his own man and he did things his way," Robbins said. "The climbing world has lost a great character and I have lost a friend."
Mr. Harding's nickname was "Batso," because of the improbable places he often found to hang, and after the character "Ratso Rizzo" in the movie "Midnight Cowboy."
In 1970, Mr. Harding and partner Dean Caldwell were involved in another climb of El Capitan that turned into a spectacle. They started up an unclimbed route they called the Wall of the Early Morning Light (now called the Dawn Wall) on Oct. 23, 1970, and spent 27 days without coming down.
At one point, Mr. Harding fell 50 feet but dusted himself off and kept climbing. Storms hit them; during one stretch in early November, they spent 107 hours straight huddled inside their covered hammocks, soaked and shivering.
The food began to run out.
A friend of Mr. Harding gave this quote, which appeared in The Chronicle: "The closer to death Harding gets, the meaner he gets."
The National Park Service decided a rescue was in order and began helicoptering ropes, supplies and potential rescuers to the summit. Mr. Harding scribbled a note in an empty tuna can and tossed it down: "A rescue is unwarranted, unwanted and will not be accepted.''
In his book, "Downward Bound," Mr. Harding fantasized about what would have happened if the rescuers had rappelled down to them:
"If these rescuers had been overzealous and insisted on taking us with them, the consequences would have been too bizarre even to think about: a wild fight with piton hammers and wine and brandy bottles," he wrote.
Mr. Harding and Caldwell eventually reached the top on Nov. 18 of that year.
Rowell went to visit Mr. Harding on his deathbed three days before he died. He said his friend woke from a semicomatose state to ask for a glass of wine, which Rowell obliged.
Mr. Harding is survived by Alice Flomp and a sister, Ardith Barber of West Sacramento.
Services for the family will be held tomorrow. A public memorial will be held Labor Day weekend in the eastern Sierra town of Bishop.
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