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Describe Yourself:
I started like other kids, climbing trees. But then I graduated to the neighborhood light pole, thirty feet up. At age 14, I first took to the rock in Southern California. From there, over the last 32 years, climbing has been not only my passion but an integral part of my career and my community of friends.
I'd already been a gymnastics league champion in high school, and by the time I was 18, I was climbing near the top standards of the day. That's when I started setting records for free climbing (when you pretend you have no rope): In 1979, I became the first woman to climb a route of the grade 5.12d.
During my first climbing trip to France in 1986, I met one of the organizers from the inaugural climbing competition, Sport Roccia in Italy, and was invited to compete there the following year. That started a six-year span during which I stayed in the top ranks, winning more than 30 international climbing competitions.
Even though most of the competitions are held on artificial walls, I continued to push myself on the natural rock. In 1991, I was the first woman to climb a route rated 5.14a. The following year, I became the first woman to make an on-sight ascent (when you've never even seen the wall before) of a climb rated 5.13b.
But my achievement that stands out above all was my first free ascent of the Nose route on El Capitan in Yosemite Valley, California. First climbed in 1958, this route is perhaps the most famous big wall climb in the world. Over the years, many top climbers tried to free climb it, but all were unsuccessful. In 1993, I became the first person, man or woman, to make an all free ascent of this route. It took four days. The following year, I free climbed the route in a day!—and ushered in a whole new era in big wall free climbing. Though there have been many new free routes climbed on El Capitan in the years since then, it took eleven years before anyone repeated an all-free ascent of the Nose!
Since then, I've climbed big alpine walls in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan, and established new routes in Morocco, Cuba and Vietnam. In 1999, I led a small team of women to Madagascar, where we did the first ascent of a 2,000-foot wall of granite wall. This route remains the most difficult first ascent of a big wall ever done by a team of women (5.13d/A0).
In addition to having been a spokesperson for the past few decades, I've taken on other projects: I produced a film about my free ascent of the Nose and an autobiography, Climbing Free: My Life in the Vertical World (W.W. Norton, 2003). I currently live in Boulder, Colorado, where I balance my time between working, climbing, traveling, and raising my three-year-old son, Owen.
Fun Facts:
> I won the Survival of the Fittest competition on NBC's Sports World four years in a row starting in 1980.
> I won the 50-meter swim competition in the Superstars competition televised on ABC's Wide World of Sports in 1981
> In 1982, I went to the California State Championships and took third place in the 1500 meter track event and fourth place in the 3000 meter event.
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