Lynn Hill(I)
Hill started climbing in 1975, when she was a 14-year-old gymnast in
Orange County, California. By 1980 she gained notice for a first ascent
on a 5.12c climb near Telluride. In 1990 she became the first woman to
climb 5.14. By then she had been on the competitive World Cup circuit
for five years, which she continued to do until burning out in 1992.
She's won more matches than she can remember--two dozen, maybe 30. What
stunned the climbing world (although if anyone could do it, Hill could)
was her success in freeing The Nose in 1993 over the course of four
days, finishing a project no one else had managed in 30 years. To
"free" a route you must climb only the rock, and only with your hands
and feet. Although Hill could rest at relay stations and had a climbing
partner to catch her when she fell, she led every pitch and managed to
climb sections that previously had been ascended only with "aid" - that
is, by hanging and climbing on equipment placed in the rock. She went
back in '94 and did the same route, free, in 23 hours. Last year, on a
North Face expedition to remote Kyrgyzstan, she and Alex Lowe
free-climbed two huge walls known as The Bird and The Bastille. (Lowe
is featured in a current North Face print advertisement, standing next
to a yellow tent pitched on a tiny piece of snow at the top of The
Bird, and Hill is pictured in another ad showing the same peak.)
