Climbing Quote of the Week: Lynn Hill

Lynn Hill, a California-raised climber, has lived a life of superlatives. In the 1990s Lynn Hill was not only the best female climber in the world but also the world’s best climber and arguably the world’s best woman athlete. In 1994 she completed an all-free, 23-hour marathon ascent of the 3,000-foot-high Nose of El Capitan in Yosemite Valley, leading every pitch from base to summit. This remarkable feat, at the time the hardest big wall free climb in the world, presaged today’s difficult free routes on El Cap done by Tommy Caldwell, the Huber brothers, and others. This quote comes from Lynn’s 2002 autobiography Climbing Free, a wonderful and inspiring memoir of motivation, focus, achievement, friends, and climbing. I saw Lynn last year and she is still pushing the envelope of the possible in her late forties, balancing the demands of parenthood with that of being one of the world’s most prolific rock climbers.

“For me, climbing is a form of exploration that inspires me to confront my own inner nature within nature. It’s a means of experiencing a state of consciousness where there are no distractions or expectations. This intuitive state of being is what allows me to experience moments of true freedom and harmony.”

Photo above: Lynn Hill competes in “The Survival of the Fittest” TV show in 1990.
Photograph © Tony Duffy/Getty Images

Buy Lynn Hill’s book:
Climbing Free: My Life in the Vertical World