Nov
06
Recently, I started rock-climbing. It’s a sport I’d tried before, going to indoor gyms every once in a while, when I could cajole someone into climbing with me. But over the past few months, I’ve become newly committed. (The word my friends and family might use is “obsessed.”) There’s the physical challenge, but I think it’s the mental game of climbing that has me hooked. I love standing at the bottom of a route, looking up and trying to visualize how I’m going to get through it. Or hanging in mid-air, working out a hard part on the wall. And there’s nothing like the feeling I get when a route “clicks” — when I’ve tried and failed, tried and failed, tried and failed, but finally, I find a way through to the top.
But I don’t mean to downplay the physical challenge. Climbing’s tough. One night, after watching me struggle on a new route, my climbing partner, who’s from Colorado and has been climbing for 10 years, said, “You should look up Lynn Hill.”
Who? When I got home, I searched for her online. Lynn Hill — whose name alone forecasted her destiny — is easily one of the best climbers in the world. And while she’s pulled off many “firsts” as a female climber, Lynn is most famous for being the first climber — male or female — to free-climb the Nose route on Yosemite’s El Capitan. Free-climbing is done without any aids, like rope ladders or spikes, to get the climber over the smoothest or toughest parts of the route. (All the climber has is her safety rope, in case she falls.) The first time Lynn “freed the Nose,” it took her four days. A year later, she returned and free-climbed the entire route in 23 hours. It took more than ten years for any climber to repeat the feat.
The more I’ve read about Lynn, the more I’ve realized how powerful a personal hero can be. Since discovering her, I find myself pushing harder when I climb and being more patient when I get stuck or fall. I keep her in the back of my head to give me a little mental boost when I’m struggling. She’s even given me a thing or two to think about: She calls climbing “moving meditation,” and she shared this insight with Climbing magazine in 2008: “The relationship between climber and stone is a special thing. It is about freedom and play… As a climber, I am the choreographer of movement, but the rock tells me how I must adapt. The stone offers a connection to myself, to nature, and to people.” There’s really something to having a person to look up to, someone who’s incredible at doing whatever you’re trying to do. It’s almost as if finding a hero gets you closer to your goal, no matter whether it’s mental or physical, career-oriented or personal.
And even more personally inspiring for me: Lynn is just shy of 5′2″ tall, which is why my climbing partner thought of her as he watched me strain to reach a hold. At 5′0″, I’ll often watch him breeze through a move, but when I step in to duplicate it, my arms or legs will come up just short. (Getting past those points requires a leap or a swing that I don’t have the strength for yet.)
To give you a sense of Lynn’s climbing, here’s a clip of her doing a few short climbs without a rope (called bouldering):
— Jacqueline Nunes
