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Lynn Hill doing her thing, way off the deck.
Photo by Lynn Hill collection

by Tom Valtin
Outdoor Adventure Session

It is hard not to think of high-altitude mountaineering and extreme rock-climbing as quintessentially macho activities. Two women who helped reshape the public's perception of these lofty pursuits—and women's place in these worlds—shared their stories, experiences, and breathtaking photographs at a Summit session called "Women Who Rock."

When Arlene Blum first tried to join high-altitude expeditions in the late 1960s, she was told that women weren't strong enough to carry heavy loads, or emotionally stable enough to handle the climbs. She was fed excuses such as the fact that there was no woman for her to share a tent with, and told she would "cause a problem in excretory situations high on the open ice." She even had to endure the insult that "there are no real woman climbers, because women either aren't good climbers or they aren't real women."

Undaunted, Blum went on to lead the first American—and the first all-women's—ascent of Nepal's famed Annapurna 1, the first American women's expedition up Alaska's Mt. McKinley (Denali), and was the first American woman to attempt Mt. Everest. Along the way she earned a doctorate in biophysical chemistry and taught at Stanford University, Wellesley College, and U.C. Berkeley, where her research was instrumental in banning tris, a cancer-causing chemical that was used as a flame retardant in children's sleepwear.

Lynn Hill, one of the world's most accomplished rock climbers and a top sport-climber in the 1980s, started climbing as a 14-year-old. She made her first ascent of Half Dome at 17, and the following year began going where no woman had gone before by mastering routes of unprecedented technical difficulty. During the early 1980s Hill became part of the elite climbing community in Yosemite Valley, and dominated international climbing competitions for the rest of the decade. In 1992 she became the first person, male or female, to make a free ascent of the notorious Nose Route on Yosemite's El Capitan.

For those unfamiliar with the lingo of rock-climbing, no ropes or other mechanical aids are allowed in a free ascent. In other words, if you slip or fall, you're history. In 1994 Hill upped the ante by becoming the first person to climb the Nose Route in a single 24-hour period. More than a decade later, both feats remain unduplicated, despite numerous attempts by some of the best big-wall climbers in the world.

Blum's book, "Annapurna: A Woman's Place," was selected as one of the hundred best adventure books of all time by National Geographic, and "Breaking Trail: A Climber's Life," will be published this October. Hill has published an autobiography, "Climbing Free: My Life in the Vertical World," and directed and produced a film about her ascent of the Nose.

-- 09/10/2005 Sat
4pm