At Home With LYNN HILL; Greatest Climber Of All Time

All I remember is seeing the leaves of the tree like this and knowing that I was falling. Lynn Hill is a revolutionary of rock climbing. I'd argue the greatest of all time. She changed the definition of what was possible in 1993 when she was the first person, man or woman, to free climb the nose on El Capitan in Yosemite, the most iconic big wall in the world. Pulling herself over the route summit, she famously turned around and said, it goes boys. Until 1993, the nose was famous for one reason, it's seeming impossibility. After Lynn made the first ascent, it was unrepeated by any other climber for the better part of a decade, and to this day it's only seen 12 free climbers since. In her backyard, climbing on a homemade replica of the iconic climb, Lynn's stories of near-death experiences, I don't know how I survived that, and her personal insights of her incredible achievements, so I wasn't really willing to give up climbing, mark a day I'll never forget. For many years, when asked who my dream guest would be on this channel, there was a name right at the top of my list that I assumed would never be checked off. Until in late September last year, I stood at the doorstep in Boulder, Colorado of a climber I've looked up to my whole climbing life, spluttering, Lynn Hill, it's so nice to meet you. It's hard to put into perspective Lynn's achievements in climbing. Her ascent of the nose on El Capitan in 1993 was the first time anyone had climbed the route without aid, a classic big wall technique where climbers use equipment to help them scale the wall. Lynn free climbed the nose, meaning that she used equipment to protect her falls, but not to help her ascend. It wasn't just the difficulty of the climb per se that drove her reputation, but rather what the climb stood for. As Alexander Huber put it, this climb passed men's dominance in climbing and left them behind. Well I grew up in a different time period where people really didn't regard women as as capable as we actually are, so I knew that for my whole life and that was kind of one of the things that underneath everything was motivating me to say look here's proof let me show you what is possible if you really want and it's not just for women it's for anyone who wants to rise to the level of whatever is important to them because the meaning comes from your intention and my intention was to share something that was of value to other people just by that demonstration so in a way it was kind of like performance art but it was through my passion of climbing and and I wasn't really expecting expecting to cash in on it it was just like something that made me feel good about what I dedicated my life to and and the meaning behind you know showing other women that it is possible. Lynn's achievements, which go well beyond the first ascent of the nose, became launching points for an increase of exposure in women in the climbing industry, which brought a wave of newly inspired female climbers onto the wall. But for any pioneering sport pushing the ceiling takes a willingness to fail. Yeah I'm always fascinated I guess by when there's a project or a goal that is kind of like unprecedented like it's not been done before that that element of like is this possible and and investing the time and the effort into that process when you don't know what the outcome could be but you believe you used to have that belief that it could be done I always just find so so interesting as a process. Belief was a very important part of this ascent and also I had nothing to lose because nobody was like you know trying to do it and scoop me or anything it was just kind of something I was trying to do and if I failed it would be a glorious failure or at least a glorious effort regardless and so I didn't feel like I had anything to lose that helps. Over 30 years later the nose still only has a handful of free climbing ascents most recently repeated by British duo Alex Waterhouse and Asked why the nose is so rarely climbed they nodded to the climb's most infamous pitch known as Changing Corners. The technical moves on this section of wall involve transitioning from one rock angle to another and are perhaps the most famous moves on rock in the world. In her yard Lynn showed us how her self-built climbing wall recreates the exact movements that Changing Corners is best known for. Her attention to detail goes down to the vinyl hold used to imitate the of the crucial foothold on the pitch. How long did it take you to free this this like sequence? Well on the original year that I did this the nose it took me only three days to figure out the whole pitch. Wow it's incredible. Then we wrapped down or no we walked down because we went to the top yeah and wrapped down to the Changing Corners which is pretty close to the top. Yeah okay and the Changing Corners is the crux pitch correct? Yes. Most people think it's the route but this is much much harder. Okay this is 14a. Trying to stay on something that's hardly even a hold like when you're putting your foot out there for me at least the way I do it I can't really see it I just have to feel it and trust it and start applying pressure as you come in and then where I'm matched I go pretty much straight in I think this should actually be just slightly higher you know for the alignment because it's pretty much straight in and then I go on on just the arete just not there's a little bit of a scoop but just kind of like that and that helps me turn my body in so then I'm like this but this is this like I said is not the real corner you know something like you're in there like that and then and then you start lay backing up these little seams like pin scars let me just see if I can do this move again I feel like I'm gonna zip right out of that. Amazing. So I have to just work it work at it a little bit. Cut towards them on the changing corners. We're all scared. So yeah you can go ahead and start like this. Sure. I feel like I'm slipping off of this. Yeah it's it's kind of slippery. Yeah there you go yeah now now back yep out down you see the problem is it's like here I'll guide you all the way over there that's it good nice yeah I'm ready for it there you go that's it match it up good I've got this massive jug now yeah massive yeah it's so good that's just fun. Talking through her experience on the nose one of the questions I was eager to ask Lynn was how she coined the famous phrase which I see as an incredibly playful jive. In 1993 I'd finished the first reassent of the nose and I went I drove from Yosemite to Mammoth where my friend John Backer was living and I was working with Boreal climbing shoes he said oh great we're going to go back to the nose and I'll take some pictures of you on the last pitch wearing the Boreal shoes and we'll make an ad and so we're just joking around and the quote came up in our joking around it goes boys so that became the ad and that's how it became famous. Lynn's ascent of the nose was of course not just a landmark moment for women but for all climbers. It reworked the landscape of climbing and shifted attitude towards big wall ascents forever. At the time it was probably difficult to imagine the knock-on legacy that her ascent might create so I asked why it was that she set her sights on the nose. I wanted to do something that represented my values as a climber so I picked something that included trad climbing something big grand beautiful and historic and yeah that route came to mind when I went to visit John Long in California because I have family out there and so I'd stop by and see him and he's like Libby you should try free climbing the nose and I'm like huh that seems like a good idea yeah so I went up with Hans Floring and he's like yeah we should do a speed ascent so we did a one day ascent in like eight hours and 15 minutes it took us right but you know he was the one that's like okay so we're going to do it in blocks and I'll lead this and do whatever you have to do and then you lead that block and you know I was trying to go as fast as I could being reasonable because I'm not going to take a hundred foot fall that's not my game which is what happened when Tommy and Alex did each of them took a hundred foot fall in their practice to do the nose in less than two hours which is insanely fast but anyway it's insane yeah so remind me what year did you do did you feed the nose in 1993 yeah and then it was nose in a day following the following year yep and that was a lot harder because you only really get one one shot at it you know from the ground yeah because the crux is all the way at the top so if you start failing at the top and you can't recover there's no way you're gonna do it yeah in a day to take her trailblazing achievements of free climbing the nose one step further lynn returned to our capitan one year later in 1994 to recline the route in a single day push which some might regard as the single greatest achievement in climbing how wild was that conceptually to go let's do this in a day was that just people just going on this is ridiculous because typically I was in my own world nobody knew what I was doing there was no internet yeah there was no I mean there might have been internet but nobody used it for social media so nobody really knew what about your own conception i.e. like you saying I've done this I'm gonna do it yeah well I'm an endurance athlete so um I figured that if I could just add a huge volume to my training then I that wouldn't feel so hard and I was also trying to um do a bunch of volume and on-site climbing so at that right before I went to the nose I did mingus on-site I was man I was hoping to just do the first free ascent this is a multi-pitch route in the verdun okay but um the crux is low down and I ended up doing it on site because that was what I was trying to do was be you know not second guess myself and just go right into the moves that I know how to do that my body knows how to do so following my natural intuition well I know it was a logical extension of the free climbing ethic of working out the moves then leaking a pitch but this was a 3,000 foot route so that that was kind of like pushing it out there even farther and I didn't think of that at first I I was just um asked by somebody who wanted to do a film would you like to do a film about something I went uh well maybe we should go in and film the nose but instead of just filming the route that's already been free climb let's add an element that makes it more interesting like free in a day bring it up enough what really stands out in lynn's achievements both in 93 when she first climbed the nose and in 94 when she climbed it in a day is her willingness to really venture into uncharted territory and to push her own personal limits in my own climbing journey I'm kind of making a bit of a transition at the moment from boulder exclusively to sport climber there's so much more I want to experience in rock climbing but something that has held me back since the beginning of my climbing journey has been fear I'm still very much in that process of managing my own fear and one of the ways I'm going to be doing that over the next few months is with altitude and hazel finley's new fear falling course she has teamed up with altitude magnus mitbo's climbing platform to bring you a six-week course that's designed to help you tackle your fear of falling head-on right now you can head to altitude.com forward slash hannah and sign up for a free mini training that hazel and altitude have put together to dispel a few myths and some like faulty training advice around fear of falling I know that fear is something that has absolutely held me back on my climbing journey so I'm genuinely really excited for this new course with hazel and altitude I think it's going to help a lot of people so if you're interested check out the free mini training and then also maybe sign up for the full six-week course I'll see you there although her achievements are mostly beyond us lynn's love and devotion for rock climbing means she's a kindred spirit for many climbers she's remained a figurehead in our sport into the 21st century and she does plan to carry on I just want to stay healthy because for me at the age of 62 longevity is important and when you're really pushing the edge you you do risk you know like making your finger worse you know or something like that but I feel pretty good if this is the only like lasting injury other than from my fall yeah which you guys may not know incredibly one of the most unlikely parts of lynn's story on the nose was that she was even still alive to attempt it was 22 meters years earlier in southern france she'd suffered a fall so big it's hard to understand how she survived I was there with my partner and all week long I was threading it at the top and and he would just top rope it clean the draws and come down and I was just being like the rope gun well this time we had a leisurely breakfast you know at a you know place in france and I just won a brand new car and a bunch of cash and I was like yeah I'm getting ready to go to leeds to the first competition in the history of the world cups and everything 89 that yeah it didn't happen may not 1989 so we get there it's in the evening my partner goes up leads to the top he threads it this time no need to do the manipulation it's a top rope it's like 5 10 and I have a light jacket on so I put the rope through my harness and I was going to tie a bowline and I went oh wait my shoes were over there so I stopped I didn't think the rope would reach so I went over got my shoes and somebody was talking to me the whole time so I got my shoes came back to the base and I thought oh should I take my jacket off oh no I don't need to it's an easy climb so I left my jacket on but I didn't see that I didn't finish my knot and so the end of the rope might have just been right at the edge of my jacket but nobody noticed they thought you know I tied my knot I thought I tied my knot so I brushed my shoes off climbed to the top didn't feel any tension on the rope but I didn't care it was just a top rope another reason why it didn't fall out of my harness yeah and then when I went to come down and I was looking over my shoulder my partner was talking to that same person so I decided to pull the other side of the rope to cinch it in for myself and then he would lower me that just pulled it right out of my harness because I pulled the other end right that's where your hands were yeah because the rope was here it wasn't tied so and you just went ah I cannot even imagine so I had to get back on the horse and and get over like that fear of leaning back if not for a couple of trees and an instinctive grapple to break her fall Lynn might not have climbed another day I don't know how I survived that these were old or not they were they're old now but they were young um kind of scrub oak kind of trees that um I was trying to look at like where the top of the climb was and how I was able to wrap my arm around it and save myself so I grabbed the tree branch because all I remember is seeing the leaves of the tree like this and knowing that I was falling and so I just made one move like this to get the tree and I was able to grab the branch and I landed like between two boulders remarkably Lynn's physical recovery from her fall was only a matter of weeks but I was intrigued to hear whether the mental impact of her near-death experience brought a shift in perspective well first of all we're all gonna die yeah we all have to live our best lives and climbing brings life to me in a way that nothing else does so I wasn't really willing to give up climbing um I know there are risks but right afterwards I was really safe I was trying to not get injured because I I wanted to be climbing and I had to stop climbing for six weeks and meanwhile the first world cup happened and you know it was something I wanted to be a part of so I didn't want to get injured on top of obviously dying I didn't want to die but generally in sport climbing as long as you you know do the basics you're not probably going to die um it's pretty rare that anyone dies sport climbing unless they do something like pilot air you know don't tie their knot or get lowered off the end of the rope that's another one people don't tie knots on the end of the rope when they're long pitches and they're looking at their partner and they're not looking at the end of the rope so there are basic things that we just need to be like pilots on airplanes they have a checklist and they go through all of it every time they fly as we toured Lynn's home all set up I consider how easy it was to forget that Lynn's first ascents came at a different time when the facilities and equipment available to climb has varied wildly to the tools we have today a training routine placed less emphasis on finger strength protocols and more on quality time and rock and running I ran I ran at like uh probably 80 or 90 percent intensity for like an hour and uh yeah just like went out I'm just gonna run I lived in a French house you know stone house and I had roads that were like there was nobody there so I just ran so I'd run and then I eventually built in a vaulted ceiling room of the stone house I put panels in there and I built a climbing wall so I'd do 10 minute circuits non-stop and the intensity would vary like going really pumped to recovery yeah I would try to be on the wall for several minutes five seven whatever yeah then try to do a hard move stay on it just do whatever I could possibly do to do my 10 minutes well and you had a specific circuit and that's after climbing all day after climbing all day so on invert on or wherever say use yeah yeah I might try did you say this pockety one yeah okay so the holds are yes yes I start out with the foot here you can use any of these um it's not that bad you get to here I think I use that foot maybe I switch to this then you go up to this and then let's see you can use that and then I think I did that to this yeah I'm seeing some put your shoulders there whoa slippy okay but anyway that's the idea okay I'll try my skin has a little bit of that I put vitamin e oil on my finger yeah left foot right foot yeah now put your left foot in that pocket yes there you go now you got it now you can easily jump yes switch it up again then you can go to this right there come on good yeah you've also got that you can switch your feet again you've got red go red go red good yay and then you could you could do that and then go again to another red one I don't really have a proper pink one you've got yellow pitchers yeah the pinch one you can do too yeah that's all yellows it's not bad you can go to the pocket you can just go to the it takes both innovation and dedication to push the sport in the direction that Lynn did and her vision for rock climbing training led her to experiment with whole creation and movement do you shape any of these or not yeah uh let's see I quite like this budo one this one is mine this one is mine I made these way before anyone was making holds no they're eco rock it was entreprise that made um no it's actually this one oh this one and I asked him if I could make volumes and they go uh no we don't do those that was before volumes were made I wanted to make a stalactite pinch thing he's like oh no no we don't do this one that's a rock beauty yeah somebody gave that to me so you made this one and what one this one it's got like a little egg honestly I had other ones but I gave them away this one's another just crimp yeah what do you think of the style of climbing nowadays did you see it going in like the olympics and stuff yeah just because obviously even if you look at the holds that you've shaped you've shaped on on the basis of rock replicating rock climbing and now it's a completely distinctive separate entity almost yeah well what I do and what I like watching I do enjoy watching it because it's really fun to see the dynamic element and it's sort of like parkour now you have to be a little bit more um I guess coordinated and also have a lot of power to do the jumps that are required but like the run and jump and all that stuff is it's coordination and timing yeah a little bit but it wasn't really the style your son is really into that right like parkour he's more into his studies right now but yeah he was good at it clearly still motivated to continue pushing the sport forwards lynn talked in depth about her ongoing project bolting new routes in her own local state of colorado and her partnership with fellow american sasha julian as one of her current sources of inspiration well I realized with this project with sasha that that was a really motivating force for me and just this last year because I hadn't really put my sights on anything like that in a long time and it's been fun it's really helped me raise my game a little bit since you know I've been distracted by producing that video and various other things you know I travel to do speaking and sometimes workshops and different things so um I think it really has to do with who you're climbing with and and the objective itself that motivates me you know just finding a route that really is beautiful and I like the movements and causes me to you know try hard and uh and train lynn's desire to give back to the community was evident and she spent years compiling her knowledge into a video resource I've been a climbing guide and coach for many years just being in that position I like sharing my information with other people and I do climbing camps and when I try to explain to people how I'm visualizing the holds and the movement I was a little frustrated because I didn't have the graphic tools to explain it and and I think if you're trying to explain something on a conscious level it's easier just to kind of lay it out there like what I've done so I put um graphic elements to show how you hang on to holds how you push on holds then the relationship between the holds usually three points of contact unless it's a dynamic move inside lynn showed us the level of detail she presented through graphics including comparisons between many different techniques displayed by professional climbers on the nose such as on the changing corners requires precision footwork and a unique combination of oppositional techniques this armbar technique along with the hip scum against the dihedral allows us to turn around inside the corner I call this double armbar technique there's more actually your question about was is this you know geared towards just beginning climbers or is it more for anyone I think it's interesting to always look into the mind of somebody else and how they think about something and and maybe you know a good climber might take one one tidbit out of it as I sat feeling content and grateful to spend time with one of my idols it felt only fitting to end with lynn sharing some of her own inspirations and stories of her climbing journey if you look back on your climbing career do you have any climbers I guess coaches didn't exist when you first started making a name for yourself but do you find did you learn more from certain climbers than any others or did you have men a mentor men mentors yourself I think that actually when I first went over to Europe I was living in the gunks so first of all I was in California learned trad climbing slab climbing where you face the rock a lot you know jamming all that stuff then I went to the gunks that was more overhanging more into the sport world but you know we were using double robes to get gear and all these weird places yeah but then when I went to Europe and it really became a focus on sport climbing I was able to watch all of my peers at the competitions or on the cliffs and I remember people making fun of like the French blowing their the chalk but uh but there was a beauty in and their their whole approach was slow it down and and really be precise and they were very precise maybe a little too slow and then on the other hand there was Chris Sharma who um you know he would just like be scrappy and put his feet where they needed to be but he wasn't trying to be slow and and fast but he was he was introducing more dynamic power and and jumping you know he was the first person that I knew that was really kind of focusing on that style yeah but you know so there was an evolution and different people that were really good like Ed Lange was beautiful to watch backer was also pretty beautiful to watch um so he was the first person that I knew that was a full-time climber because I was like full-time climbing how do you do that who's going to pay your bills how do you eat and so at that time there were a few Hollywood sort of television shows like that's incredible where I climbed over a hot air balloon in flight and then backer went out to Joshua Tree and did a bunch of soloing you know he had a solo circuit of all these things that he could do without a rope and so there were a few things like that and then the survival of the fittest competition that brought prize money and and that's how I paid my way through college and then I didn't use my college because then I got kidnapped by the whole competition circuit thing and uh you know I couldn't say no it was an opportunity to go over to Europe before internet before we knew what was going on you know in all the different countries and it was a really fun time to meet people and and discover limestone I didn't even know limestone before I went to Europe yeah yeah thank you so much for your time today it's been honestly an absolute honor to climb with you and see your state and try this wonderful simulation yeah it's uh been amazing so thank you so much thank you and good luck with everything thank you