Lynn Hill

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.)