Lynn Hill

Carolynn Marie Hill (born January 3, 1961) is an American rock climber. Widely regarded as one of the leading competition climbers, traditional climbers (and particularly big wall climbers), sport climbers, and boulderers in the world during the late 1980s and early 1990s, she is famous for making the first free ascent of the difficult sheer rock face of The Nose on El Capitan in Yosemite Valley, and for repeating it the next year in less than 24 hours. She has been described as both one of the best female climbers in the world and one of the best climbers in the history of the sport. Hill was the first-ever female in history to redpoint a 5.12d (7c), 5.13a (7c+) and 5.14a (8b+) graded sport climbing route. Hill shaped rock climbing for women and became a public spokesperson, helping it gain wider popularity and arguing for sex equality. Hill has publicized climbing by appearing on television shows and documentaries and writing an autobiography, Climbing Free: My Life in the Vertical World.

Hill was a gymnast early in life, nearly broke a world record lifting weights, and ran competitively. She took to climbing at a young age, showing a natural aptitude for the activity, and became a part of the climbing community in Southern California and Camp 4 in Yosemite Valley. She traveled around the United States during the early 1980s climbing increasingly difficult routes and setting records for first female ascents and for first ascents. From 1986 to 1992 Hill was one of the world's most accomplished competition climbers, winning over thirty international titles, including five victories at the Arco Rock Master. This coincided with the era when the leading female climbers caught up with the leading men. In 1992, Hill left competitive climbing and returned to traditional climbing. She set for herself the challenge of free climbing The Nose of El Capitan, her greatest climbing feat. Hill continues to climb and has not stopped taking on ambitious climbs. As of 2013, she was a sponsored athlete for the Patagonia gear and clothing company and owned a small business that offered climbing courses.

Born in Detroit, Michigan, Hill grew up in Fullerton, California. She is the fifth of seven children; her mother was a dental hygienist and her father an aerospace engineer. She was an active child who climbed everything from trees to street lights. Starting at age eight, she learned gymnastics but disliked the way girls "had to smile and do cutesy little routines on the floor". Thus, even though she was part of a successful YMCA gymnastics team that competed in southern California and performed in halftime shows for the California Angels, she quit at the age of 12. In her autobiography, Hill describes feeling "resistant to rules", an attitude she identified as both normal for her age and influenced by the era in which she grew up: "My awareness of issues like women's rights and the struggle for racial freedom began to grow". She even questioned the chores assigned in her family, noting the differences between the boys and girls—the boys had weekly tasks while the girls had daily tasks. During high school, Hill took up gymnastics again and became one of the top gymnasts in her state, a skill that eventually contributed to her climbing success. In particular, the ability to conceptualize a series of complex movements as small, distinct ones and to thrive under pressure gave Hill a significant edge.

In 1975, Hill's sister, Kathy Hill and her sister's fiancé, Chuck Bludworth, took her on her first climbing trip; she was hooked, leading from the first day. For Hill, this activity became an escape from the emotional turmoil of her parents' divorce, and "by her late teens she identified less with her imperfect family in Orange County than with an 'imperfect family of friends' at climbing areas". Hill took her first trip to Yosemite, a central destination for climbers, at the age of 16, where she was introduced to the climbers at Camp 4. There she met Charlie Row, her first boyfriend. Their romance flourished; with him she climbed her first 5.11 and first big wall.

As a young teenager, Hill climbed in southern California, primarily in Joshua Tree National Park. She earned money for day trips out to the park by working at a Carl's Jr. Bludworth initially taught her climbing culture; he subscribed to magazines and read books which Hill then devoured. She was influenced in particular by Yvon Chouinard's ethic of "leaving no trace" on the rock. Moreover, the climbing of Beverly Johnson captured her imagination, particularly Johnson's 10-day solo of Dihedral Wall on El Capitan. As Hill explains in her autobiography, "I was awed, but not just by the know-how and hard work she'd put into her ascent. It was the courage and confidence that it took to put herself on the line, to do something on the cutting edge—to climb one of the world's greatest big walls in one of the most challenging ways possible: solo. She had succeeded and she'd given women climbers like me enormous confidence to be ourselves and not feel limited by being a minority in a male-dominated sport."

Hill attended Fullerton College in the late 1970s, but she did not have a strong interest in any academic subject; instead she was focused on climbing. In the summers of 1976–78 and the early 1980s Hill frequently camped at Camp 4 in Yosemite Valley, becoming part of the climbing community centered there and joining the search and rescue team. In her autobiography, Hill describes the community as "a ragged occupying army, annoying park rangers by eluding camp fees, overstaying their welcome, and comporting themselves like gypsies". As Hill describes it, climbing in the late 1970s and early 1980s was "something that people who were outcasts in society did, people who were not conformists". As she had earlier, Hill worked in order to be able to climb. One summer, she writes, she survived in Camp 4 on only $75. In her autobiography, she describes how climbers eked out a life at the camp, recycling cans to pay for climbing ropes and subsisting on condiments and left-over food from tourists. However, Hill remembers "these dirt-poor days ... [as] among the best and the most carefree of my life, and though my friends were often scoundrels, I felt their friendship convincingly."

Beverly Johnson had previously started to bridge the gender gap at Camp 4, but it remained strongly male-dominated. The community was particularly homosocial; its major historian calls it "edgy" rather than "oppressive" and argues that there was pressure on women to perform to men's standards and that "women had to contend with an army of men trying to maintain Camp 4 as a guy's domain". There was no coherent female climbing community; rather, female climbers tended to adopt the masculine attitudes of their compatriots. In her autobiography, Hill writes that climbing "back then was directed by a fraternity of men, and there was little encouragement of, or frankly, inclination for women to participate. Yet women climbers were out there." For example, from age 18 to 22, Hill climbed with Mari Gingery every weekend, completing an ascent of The Nose and then the first female-only ascent of The Shield on El Capitan over a period of six days.

Hill learned the essence of her climbing technique from the Stonemasters group during this time. She adopted the attitudes of traditional climbing, a style of climbing which emphasizes using removable protection rather than bolts (which scar the rock) and rewards climbers who climb a new route from bottom to top without stopping or starting over. She also became a dedicated free climber, which emphasizes climbing an entire route without hanging on the rope or relying on equipment to skip difficult sections. Early on she was a fearless climber but after "a few death-defying experiences on routes with long run-outs" she learned to be wary of falling.