Carolynn Marie Hill (born January 3, 1961) is an American rock climber. Widely regarded as one of the leading competition climbers, traditional climbers (and particularly big wall climbers), sport climbers, and boulderers 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 in the history of the sport. Hill was the first-ever female in history to redpoint a , and graded sport climbing route. 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. She traveled around the United States during the early 1980s climbing increasingly difficult routes and setting records for first female ascents and for first ascents. From 1986 to 1992 Hill was one of the world's most accomplished competition climbers, winning over thirty international titles, including five victories at the Arco Rock Master. This coincided with the era when the leading female climbers caught up with the leading men. In 1992, Hill left competitive climbing and returned to traditional climbing. She set for herself the challenge of free climbing The Nose of El Capitan, her greatest climbing feat. Hill continues to climb and has not stopped taking on ambitious climbs. As of 2013, she was a sponsored athlete for the Patagonia gear and clothing company and owned a small business that offered climbing courses.
Early years
Childhood Born in Detroit, Michigan, Hill grew up in Fullerton, California. She is the fifth of seven children; her mother was a dental hygienist and her father an aerospace engineer. She was an active child who climbed everything from trees to street lights. Starting at age eight, she learned gymnastics but disliked the way girls "had to smile and do cutesy little routines on the floor". Thus, even though she was part of a successful YMCA gymnastics team that competed in southern California and performed in halftime shows for the California Angels, she quit at the age of 12. In her autobiography, Hill describes feeling "resistant to rules", an attitude she identified as both normal for her age and influenced by the era in which she grew up: "My awareness of issues like women's rights and the struggle for racial freedom began to grow". She even questioned the chores assigned in her family, noting the differences between the boys and girls—the boys had weekly tasks while the girls had daily tasks. During high school, Hill took up gymnastics again and became one of the top gymnasts in her state, a skill that eventually contributed to her climbing success. In particular, the ability to conceptualize a series of complex movements as small, distinct ones and to thrive under pressure gave Hill a significant edge.
Introduction to climbing In 1975, Hill's sister, Kathy Hill and her sister's fiancé, Chuck Bludworth, took her on her first climbing trip; she was hooked, leading from the first day. For Hill, this activity became an escape from the emotional turmoil of her parents' divorce, and "by her late teens she identified less with her imperfect family in Orange County than with an 'imperfect family of friends' at climbing areas". Hill took her first trip to Yosemite, a central destination for climbers, at the age of 16, where she was introduced to the climbers at Camp 4. There she met Charlie Row, her first boyfriend. Their romance flourished; with him she climbed her first 5.11 and first big wall.
As a young teenager, Hill climbed in southern California, primarily in Joshua Tree National Park. She earned money for day trips out to the park by working at a Carl's Jr. Bludworth initially taught her climbing culture; he subscribed to magazines and read books which Hill then devoured. She was influenced in particular by Yvon Chouinard's ethic of "leaving no trace" on the rock. Moreover, the climbing of Beverly Johnson captured her imagination, particularly Johnson's 10-day solo of Dihedral Wall on El Capitan. As Hill explains in her autobiography, "I was awed, but not just by the know-how and hard work she'd put into her ascent. It was the courage and confidence that it took to put herself on the line, to do something on the cutting edge—to climb one of the world's greatest big walls in one of the most challenging ways possible: solo. She had succeeded and she'd given women climbers like me enormous confidence to be ourselves and not feel limited by being a minority in a male-dominated sport."
Hill attended Fullerton College in the late 1970s, but she did not have a strong interest in any academic subject; instead she was focused on climbing. In the summers of 1976–78 and the early 1980s Hill frequently camped at Camp 4 in Yosemite Valley, becoming part of the climbing community centered there and joining the search and rescue team. In her autobiography, Hill describes the community as "a ragged occupying army, annoying park rangers by eluding camp fees, overstaying their welcome, and comporting themselves like gypsies". As Hill describes it, climbing in the late 1970s and early 1980s was "something that people who were outcasts in society did, people who were not conformists". As she had earlier, Hill worked in order to be able to climb. One summer, she writes, she survived in Camp 4 on only $75. In her autobiography, she describes how climbers eked out a life at the camp, recycling cans to pay for climbing ropes and subsisting on condiments and left-over food from tourists. However, Hill remembers "these dirt-poor days ... [as] among the best and the most carefree of my life, and though my friends were often scoundrels, I felt their friendship convincingly."
Beverly Johnson had previously started to bridge the gender gap at Camp 4, but it remained strongly male-dominated. The community was particularly homosocial; its major historian calls it "edgy" rather than "oppressive" and argues that there was pressure on women to perform to men's standards and that "women had to contend with an army of men trying to maintain Camp 4 as a guy's domain". There was no coherent female climbing community; rather, female climbers tended to adopt the masculine attitudes of their compatriots. In her autobiography, Hill writes that climbing "back then was directed by a fraternity of men, and there was little encouragement of, or frankly, inclination for women to participate. Yet women climbers were out there." For example, from age 18 to 22, Hill climbed with Mari Gingery every weekend, completing an ascent of The Nose and then the first female-only ascent of The Shield on El Capitan over a period of six days.
Hill learned the essence of her climbing technique from the Stonemasters group during this time. She adopted the attitudes of traditional climbing, a style of climbing which emphasizes using removable protection rather than bolts (which scar the rock) and rewards climbers who climb a new route from bottom to top without stopping or starting over. She also became a dedicated free climber, which emphasizes climbing an entire route without hanging on the rope or relying on equipment to skip difficult sections. Early on she was a fearless climber but after "a few death-defying experiences on routes with long run-outs" she learned to be wary of falling.
Hill climbed with and became involved with climber John Long at the end of the 1970s. Their relationship began in the summer of 1978 when she heard him recite a poem he had written about a female climber and what kind of man she wanted.Hill and Long climbed together and worked out together, lifting weights and running. It was at his suggestion that she attempted to break the world record for the bench press in her weight class (); however, while she could easily lift while training, in competition she froze. Hill and Long spent the winter of 1981 in Las Vegas, Nevada, climbing during the day and working nights at "dead end jobs" like pizza waitress.
The following year Hill and Long moved from Las Vegas to Santa Monica, California, where she attended Santa Monica College (SMC) and majored in biology. She was recruited by the track coach even though she had no competitive running experience. After training for a few months, she placed third in the 1500 meters and fourth in the 3000 meters at the state meet, helping SMC to win the state championship. To make ends meet, she worked at an outdoor store, as a gym teacher, and occasionally appeared on daredevil television shows.
In 1983, Hill was interviewed by Ultrasport. They offered her a free flight to New York for the interview and as part of the trip she was taken to the Shawangunks, a famous nearby climbing area. Finding she liked the climbing environment and yearning for some new challenges, she decided to stay and moved to New Paltz, New York. At the same time, Long was preparing for a journey to Borneo and embarking on a career as a writer. The couple went their separate ways but remained friends. After moving to New York, Hill attended the State University of New York at New Paltz and graduated with a degree in biology in 1985.
Climbing career
Hill started to participate in climbing competitions in the mid-1980s, but one of her first significant accomplishments was in 1979. She became the first person to free climb Ophir Broke in Ophir, Colorado, which has a difficulty rating of 5.12d and was the hardest route ever climbed by a woman at that time. It was the hardest crack climb in Colorado at the time and there were only one or two harder ones in Yosemite. Long was amazed by her feat. He has said "that's when I knew for certain that this woman had extraordinary talent". The regional guidebook credits Long with the first free ascent of the route; Hill speculates the reason for this is that at the time she was an unknown climber and known only as Long's partner and protege. In her autobiography, Hill explains that it was during this climb that she realized it is not a person's size or strength but ability to be creative on the rock that is important: "The big lesson for me ... was to realize that despite what appeared to be a limitation due to my small stature, I could create my own method of getting past a difficult section of rock. John's size and power enabled him to make long reaches and explosive lunge moves that were completely out of my range. I, on the other hand, often found small intermediate holds that John couldn't even imagine gripping ... Short or tall, man or woman, the rock is an objective medium that is equally open for interpretation by all."