Every once in a while, a route is sent that sends shockwaves through the rock climbing world. Think Wolfgang Güllich’s Action Directe in 1991, Alex Honnold’s free solo of El Cap in 2017, or Adam Ondra’s Silence, also in 2017. When an individual does more than just raise the bar, but rather shatters the ceiling. These are the climbs that etch the names of the world’s greatest climbers into history forever.
For American legend Lynn Hill, her pièce de résistance was the free climb of El Cap’s The Nose in 1994. Climbed in just 23 hours, it was an unprecedented achievement at the time. Yvon Chouinard, fellow climbing legend and the founder of Patagonia, proclaimed that the feat was ‘the biggest thing that’s ever been done on rock’.
