Originally published in the Mazama Bulletin—view the full December 2019 issue.
“It goes, boys.”
Not often are we privileged to sit in the same room as a climbing legend, listening to their story with open mouths or a smile on our face, but that’s exactly what the sold-out crowd at the Portland Alpine Festival’s leading event The Summit: An Evening with Lynn Hill was all about.
The event began as a low-key opportunity to mingle with fellow members of the local mountain community, delicious food and beverage in hand. The crowds flowed from space to space at The Redd on Salmon Street, a soaring building on the Central Eastside featuring a mix of modern technology and gritty industrial history.
Inside, seats near the stage got snagged with coats early on, and people gathered around tables to swap stories and enjoy a healthy amount of heavy hors d’oeuvres. Silent auction prizes and raffle items ranging from outerwear to technical alpine equipment—and everything in between—ran down the outer edge of the room.
Outside, friends could gather around fires under a rain-free sky, or weave through the event sponsors beneath a large tent, filling out their raffle bingo cards as they went. Each sponsor table featured the latest and greatest of mountain gear, trail food, and organizations that are hard at work to make the outdoors a safer and more inclusive space for everyone. Games included a climbing hold competition, helmet cornhole, rock stacking, and the (somewhat mysterious for the uninitiated) deceptively difficult game of standing from a sitting fetal position with a broom behind your bent knees.
When 8 p.m. rolled around, it was time to head indoors and take our seats beneath strands of patio lights strung throughout the space. Mazamas Executive Director Mitsu Iwasaki took the stage to thank everyone involved in making the Portland Alpine Festival a success for the 7th year running, before introducing Lynn Hill herself.
For those who don’t know, Lynn is a pioneer in the male-dominated sport of climbing. She made a name for herself and women everywhere in Yosemite and around the world as the first woman to climb 5.14, and as the first person of any gender to free climb The Nose of El Capitan. To this day, twenty-six years after her iconic ascent of The Nose, Lynn can and still does climb better than most people in her audience.
The next hour consisted of listening to tales of climbing as a woman in the 1980s and 90s. Lynn began by describing a childhood spent “climbing the monkey bars like a pro” and getting inspired to climb after seeing an article in National Geographic. Weaving humor and vintage videos into her talk, it was nonetheless depressing (if not surprising) to learn that although rock doesn’t discriminate, people do. Lynn repeatedly was confronted with acts of sexism in her climbing, from getting paid ⅓ the amount of fellow male competitors on the televised Survival of the Fittest to having been told that “women can’t climb a man’s route” (she did).
Throughout her talk were pieces of wisdom about climbing and life: to take responsibility for yourself, to appreciate luxuries (like horizontal beds), to not gloss over difficult or uncomfortable moments, and to speak up if something doesn’t feel right. She’s also an inspiration for women everywhere, having recently wrapped up a single-push free attempt on The Nose with Nina Caprez. Pinky jams aside, Lynn described one of the major difficulties of that trip as having to retrain her abs post-C-section to climb such difficult moves.
All in all, the night was fantastic. And being 2019, we of course had to wrap up with a selfie with Lynn before heading off to Base Camp Brewing for the after-party.
Be First to Comment