Lynn Hill Isn’t Done Climbing

My memoir Climbing Free focused on the first 25 years of my life as a climber. This reflection is about the next 25 years of my life as a climber and mother. I couldn’t have imagined that what started out as a simple outing in 1975 with my two older sisters, my brother, and my sister’s boyfriend Chuck would become such an integral part of my life, connecting me to a community of people all over the world.

If my life’s meaning could be summarized in a simple phrase, I would choose this quote from Mark Twain: “The two most important days of your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”

In looking back on my life, I realize that perhaps the day I found out my “why” is September 16, 1994, when I free climbed the Nose in one magical day. I had no idea how this ascent would impact my own life, as well as the lives of so many people throughout the world. At that time, no one—not even me—understood that it would take over a decade for this ascent to be repeated by anyone, man or woman.

By the time I had finished writing Climbing Free in 2002, the only person to have repeated a free ascent of the Nose was Scott Burke, who summited in 1998 after 261 days of effort. Due to an impending storm on his 12-day ground-up ascent, Scott top roped the Great Roof pitch, though he was able to free climb this pitch. It took over a decade before Tommy Caldwell and Beth Rodden finally repeated an all-free ascent in 2005. In the 30 years since my first free ascent, only 12 people have made an all free ascent of the Nose. Tommy Caldwell is still the only other person to have done a free ascent of the Nose in one day.

I returned to Yosemite in 2018 with a talented young Swiss climber named Nina Caprez, who was interested in making an all free ascent of the Nose. This turned out to be an ideal opportunity to support my friend, while celebrating the 25th anniversary of the first free ascent. In those 25 years, I hadn’t even sent a route of comparable difficulty. Nonetheless, my personal goal was simply to try free climbing as much of the route as possible. This experience gave me a much better perspective of the difficulty of this route, as well as a chance to reflect on how my life as a climber and mother had changed over the years.

In 2003, I bought a house in Boulder, Colorado and a few months later, I gave birth to my son, Owen. I was content to adopt a more stable lifestyle in a progressive community close to good climbing, skiing, and hiking. By the age of two, Owen had already traveled to more than 10 different countries. As soon as he was old enough to go to school, my travels became less frequent, especially since I had become a single mom living on a drastically reduced income.

My priority was no longer about my own climbing goals, yet I still managed to climb while Owen was in school or between work engagements. Adopting a cat and then a dog made traveling even more complicated. Most of my climbing took place at Boulder’s local crags, or more often than not, at the climbing gym, with occasional trips to far away destinations. Speaking engagements, climbing camps, and other work related opportunities enabled me to make short trips across the US, and to several countries in Europe and New Zealand. On one occasion, I flew all the way to southern China just to spend five days climbing in this extraordinary place!

Many people assumed that Owen would become a climber since he is such a talented natural athlete, but climbing was not his passion. Maybe that’s because, as he explains, “climbing is too slow.” Or perhaps it was the pressure he might have felt as the son of Lynn Hill. Despite our many camping and climbing trips with friends and kids his age, he seemed to enjoy swinging on ropes more than the actual climbing.

A relatively new sport that did appeal to Owen, however, was parkour. We took a basic parkour class together with a few friends back when one of the first parkour gyms in the country opened in Boulder. Shortly after our parkour gym closed, Owen and a bunch of his buddies began to meet at a local gymnastics center, where they created a new form of movement called “tricking.” Similar to the tumbling sequences of gymnastics, tricking is a kind of performance art that involves an innovative series of flipping maneuvers.

I was happy to see the camaraderie that Owen shared with his friends, as well as the confidence he gained, and the physical strength and skills he was developing. It reminded me of the early days of climbing, when our intimate group of friends—now referred to as the Stonemasters—were pioneering new routes and pushing the level of free climbing at our local crags.

However, unlike climbing, which is a great lifestyle sport, tricking took a toll on Owen’s hips, so he turned his focus to playing music. Perhaps the exposure to different languages and accents on all our travels helped him develop a keen ear for language and music. One day, without any prior piano lessons, Owen blew my mind by playing a beautiful piece of classical music. It brought tears to my eyes. For his first album that he mixed together with a friend, Owen sang, while playing the drums, guitar, and base. Unfortunately, like climbing, making a living from your passion is not an easy path.

It’s also a path inevitably shaped by the technologies that Owen grew up using. As the way we work, conduct research, and communicate constantly changes, our virtual connections are rapidly impacting our in-person interactions. Climbing has also evolved as a result of technology. I remember when my friends and I would joke about the seemingly ridiculous possibility that there would be climbers who only climbed indoors on artificial walls. With the advent of climbing board systems like the MoonBoard, Kilter Board and Tension Board, it’s possible to repeat the exact same boulder problems with the same configuration of holds anywhere in the world.

Technology has also enabled climbers to “work from home,” thanks to Starlink technology that provides Internet connection in the most remote places on the planet. It’s no wonder van life is so attractive to many climbers. The cost of living in my hometown of Boulder, like many other desirable places, has become increasingly difficult to afford. Meanwhile, the need for guidebooks has been all but replaced by apps such as Mountain Project, which has given climbers free access to all the beta, from GPS coordinates to recent updates about routes.

With the exponential growth of climbing worldwide, several nonprofit organizations such as The Access Fund, The American Alpine Club, and The Outdoor Alliance have become indispensable in helping manage the environmental, political, and ethical issues that climbers in the US face today. Gone are the days of dirtbags making spontaneous plans to climb in our beloved national parks without making a reservation in advance and paying an entrance fee.

Political and legal issues associated with climbing are not limited to the US. Even in France, where the culture of climbing and mountaineering is revered, many recent closures to climbing on private lands have resulted from threats of lawsuits due to accidents. Thanks to the organizations in the US, we have the legal support to help protect the interests of climbers and outdoor enthusiasts. In December 2024, the EXPLORE (Expanding Public Lands Outdoor Recreation Experiences) Act finally passed, allowing climbers the legal right to manage the replacement of fixed anchors and bolts on existing routes in designated Wilderness areas (provided they do not diminish the Wilderness character of the area.) The ethic of the Clean Climbing campaign first introduced in the early ‘70s by Doug Robinson has come full circle. Climbers are now working with the National Park Service to help strike a balance between the protection of outdoor recreation and the preservation of our natural resources.

Along with the growth of the outdoor industry, more climbers and “extreme athletes” are making a living through sponsorships, or as social media influencers. As the level of competition has grown, so too have the level of performance and the level of risk. It’s no surprise that there has been a corresponding increase in the number of serious injuries and deaths in recent years.

The rising temperatures associated with global warming have also contributed to the rising number of deaths in the alpine environment. Due to the rapid melting of glaciers over the last 100 years or more, there has been an increasing number of avalanches and unprecedented rockfall in mountains around the world. When I lost my brother-in-law Chuck on his first mountaineering expedition to Aconcagua, I began to question the level of risk I was willing to take.

Though I have done some free soloing in the past, it was apparent to me from the beginning, that free soloing was not worth the gamble of possibly losing my life. After my near death experience when I fell 72 feet to the ground in Buoux, France, I’ve come to accept the risks associated with climbing. Being a mother has made me even more cautious when it comes to risks. Over the years, I’ve lost an increasing number of friends—some due to climbing accidents, but more often than not, due to cancer, heart disease, car crashes, or other unexpected accidents.

In 2022, Sasha DiGiulian invited me to be her partner in an attempt to free climb Logical Progression, a 28-pitch (5.13b) route in Chihuahua, Mexico. It wasn’t the right time for me to be focusing on a big wall project like this. My son was about to graduate from high school and my father-in-law was battling melanoma. This was also during the end of the COVID lockdown period and I hadn’t visited my mom and her husband in over a year. The day I called my mother to tell her that I had made the decision not to go to Mexico, I found out that later that same day, my step-father had passed away. I was glad to be there for my mom during this painful time, and to be able to celebrate my son’s graduation ceremony in person.

Rather than go climbing with Sasha in Mexico, I proposed that we establish a new route in our own backyard instead. After picking out a beautiful line up the south face of The Maiden in the Flatirons near our homes in Boulder, I wrote up a proposal to get the necessary permission to establish our new route. Our proposed route went directly up the middle of an improbable looking face with just enough features that it appeared feasible to free climb.

In order to get the permission we needed, we had to find a way to place some natural protection on this overhanging face to allow us to get a better idea of the actual difficulty and where we would place protection bolts. Since this 278-foot tall formation is overhanging and the last section of the route traverses to the side almost the same distance as it overhangs, this proved a more challenging task than I had imagined.

I started out by leading up the first pitch of an existing route called Kor Dalke, that criss-crosses up the south face and intersects with our objective in a few places. I was able to climb up to a belay ledge above Kor Dalke, where I placed adequate natural protection for our first anchor point. To establish the next anchor point, we climbed the third pitch of Kor Dalke, where another natural anchor was installed above the second pitch. The last pitch involved a lot of acrobatic maneuvers and clever rope management techniques in order to get in a few pieces of gear on the dramatically overhanging face.

Upon submitting a second proposal with more specifics about our proposed route, we gained permission to begin working on our project. The following winter, Sasha and I spent numerous days cleaning the rock, establishing protection bolts, and working out a sequence of moves up this beautiful face. Though Sasha is a Millennial from a completely different generation, we had a great time getting to know each other and working together to create a fun climb to share with our community. By the spring of 2023, we had completed the first ascent of a three-pitch (5.13c) route that we named Queen-line.

After retiring from my career as a professional climber, I thought a lot about how I wanted to earn a living. Rather than focusing on the accumulation of financial wealth, I chose to dedicate my time to utilizing my most unique assets to provide a service to others. The countless number of interviews, videos, and podcasts I’ve participated in over the years—as well as endorsing numerous environmental campaigns—has been my way of giving back to the climbing community and helping preserve our natural environment.

Of all the services I have offered over the years, teaching and coaching has been my favorite means of sharing meaningful experiences with others. While Owen was a toddler, I took the American Mountain Guides Association (AMGA) rock instructor course, along with the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) Wilderness First Responder course, so that I could become a certified rock climbing guide. After years of experience as an instructor, I realized that it would be useful to create an educational video to demonstrate the mechanics of climbing technique. Through a lot of experimentation with graphic tools that didn’t exist when I first embarked on this project over a decade ago, I was finally able to produce a video called, “Fundamentals of Climbing.”

In 2006, with the intention of eventually hosting climbing camps, I bought a parcel of land in Hueco, Texas, home to world-class bouldering and fun route climbing on uniquely featured rock unlike anywhere else on the planet. Located 40 minutes outside of El Paso, Hueco Tanks is an oasis with a unique history that has attracted humans and animals for more than 10,000 years.

When Owen was a toddler, I had started a business offering climbing camps in various places across the US and a few in Sardinia, Italy. I knew that by the time Owen graduated from high school, I would have more time to develop my property in Hueco. With this vision in mind, I have made progress in developing my property over the years. After clearing a spot on my land and installing a septic tank, I purchased a 1976 Airstream that had rolled and needed a lot of work to become livable. It took me until just a few years ago to get electricity installed, along with a 3,000-gallon water tank and pump. Last year, I hired a few local climbing friends to build a bathhouse with a shower, sink, and two toilets. As of last week, I have the architectural and structural plans necessary to build a house that can accommodate groups of people, climbing teams, or simply friends who want to climb with me in this amazing place.

In 2019, I returned to the Nose with Nina Caprez for the second time. She had been so close to sending the route the previous year, that I was psyched to go back and support her again. On our final push—we had been on the wall for a week—Nina had led and free climbed every pitch on the route up to the Changing Corners. I was happy to have free climbed all but the two most difficult sections on the Great Roof and the Changing Corners. On Nina’s final attempt to free climb the Changing Corners, she fell only one inch away from sending and was too exhausted to give it another try! I felt bad for Nina since she was clearly capable of free climbing every inch of the Nose. But I had never been away from my son for more than two weeks and it was time for me to return home.

My relationship with Nina had grown through our experiences together and I knew she was struggling to process this experience and move forward in her life. After a difficult period of reflection, she decided to take the opportunity to climb in a tropical limestone paradise on an island called Makatea in French Polynesia. As it turned out, Nina met her partner, Jeremy, with whom she fell in love and had her first child named Lia. Within the next few months, Nina will give birth to their second child. Ironically, Nina’s so-called “failure” on the Nose, led to her realizing perhaps the most meaningful success of her life.

People sometimes ask me if I still climb. I can’t imagine ever quitting climbing unless I become physically incapable. I love the feeling of grace and fluidity that I experience when moving over the rock. I can’t think of a more appropriate way of learning and adapting in the world than by climbing on the beautiful shapes and forms of nature.

I’m grateful to have been able to follow my passion all these years. Climbing remains my anchor in life that provides a connection to nature, mind/body health, and to so many people in my community of friends and peers all over the world.

My hope for the future is that we will unite and cooperate together as a global community to create a more sustainable way of life for all.