page_title: Lynn Hill
section_title: Competitive career
hierarchical_section_title: Lynn Hill / Climbing career / Competitive career
caption_attribution_description: some of the limestone/sandstone cliffs at Buoux, Haute Provence, France
context_page_description: Carolynn Marie "Lynn" Hill is a U.S. rock climber. Widely regarded as one of the leading competitive sport climbers 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 of all time. One of the first successful women in the sport, 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.
context_section_description: As a result of Hill's impressive climbs in The Gunks, she was invited to climb in Europe in 1986. The French Alpine Club invited a group of elite American climbers to climb in the Verdon Gorge, Fontainebleau, and Buoux. Hill felt an immediate affinity for French culture and climbing. She particularly enjoyed climbing on the limestone common in France because it has many pockets and edges, producing "wildly acrobatic climbs" with low risk. Moreover, these types of climbs are ideal for people of small stature, like Hill. She tried sport climbing in France for the first time that year. Inspired and intrigued by European climbing culture, she returned later and took part in Arco e Bardonecchia Sportroccia '86, the second edition of the first international sport climbing competition, which later became the Rock Master annual event. The event was divided into two stages, one in Arco and one in Bardonecchia, Italy. She competed against other women on extremely difficult routes, gaining points for style and speed. She lost to Catherine Destivelle in a "disputed ruling" but won in the following year. Destivelle in her autobiography, reckons she won that year because she planned to climb fast from the beginning, as speed was decisive in case of equality, which she doubts Hill was aware of when starting the competition. In an interview, Hill has said that this first competition was "disorienting" because she did not understand the language, the "format" or the "judging" nor did the organizers of the competition. "There were a lot of politics involved, a lot of nationalism and disorganization. The rules seemed to change during the event. I remember asking about the disparity between prize money for men and women. The only response I got was, 'If the women climb without their tops, then we'll pay them the same.'" However, she continued with competition climbing because she found it stimulating to climb with "other strong women". In one interview, Hill said that "if there wasn't a Catherine Destivelle or Luisa Iovane ... or whoever there, then it would be anticlimactic." Destivelle became Hill's main competition in the late 1980s while Isabelle Patissier emerged to challenge her in the early 1990s.
  She became a professional climber in 1988 and the subsequent interviews, photoshoots and media appearances led to her becoming a spokesperson for climbing. As Hill explained, competition climbing is "such a different activity than going out and climbing on rock ... You're in front of all these people ... You're there to perform."  From the beginning of her sport climbing career, Hill was aware that the sport was evolving and growing. For example, she pointed out in an interview that some competition organizers would chop down trees and alter rocks just for the sake of a competition; she could foresee that competitions would all eventually take place on artificial walls for environmental reasons.
  Throughout the early 1980s, Hill had remained a traditionalist, but after her 1986 trip to Europe, she started adopting many sport climbing techniques. For instance, she had resisted hang-dogging (hanging on the rope at any point during the climb), holding with the philosophy that it was cheating, but after experimenting with it during her ascent of Vandals, she found it a useful way to learn challenging climbs. During the mid-1980s, there was great tension in the climbing community between traditionalists and new sport climbers. There was even a "Great Debate" in 1986 at the American Alpine Club at which a panel of all-star participants—including Hill—were invited to discuss the merits of the two different styles, especially sport climbing that required the insertion of fixed bolts into the rock. Hill has argued that "the purpose of climbing is to adapt yourself to the rock. You work on yourself to overcome the obstacle of the rock ... I believe climbers should leave the rock as unaltered as possible ... you have a responsibility not only to put in safe bolts but to put them in logical places—to do the least possible alteration of the rock to estab
caption: Hill fell 85 ft (25 m) while climbing at the cliffs at Buoux, Haute Provence, but was back on the rock only six weeks later.
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