I've had Cassius on North River 2 since he was three months old - July 4, 2020! Sometimes he likes it, sometimes he wants to go on the "fast boat, not the sailboat". But I'm hopeful that yesterday was a turning point. He got to steer. Taking command increases confidence. A soft steady breeze after days of rain from a passing hurricane Ophelia.
With Taisy at his side Cassius rose to the occasion.
- GWC
Risk is fickle. As nice Jewish girls from Brooklyn know.
Ask Liza Mills.
On Mills’s second big wall she found herself partnering with Lynn Hill, a dear friend from the Gunks, who, after moving from New York to Yosemite, passed the mantle of top Gunks woman climber to Mills. Still, Mills recalls, “When we’d walk around Camp 4, climbers looked at me, like, Huh? Who’s that?”
“Meanwhile everyone knew Lynn. She was climbing’s rock star.”
Their route, El Cap’s West Face (VI 5.11c, 20 pitches), should have been a stroll for the duo. But as Mills knew from her childhood in Brooklyn: Risk is everywhere.
Example: Hydration backpacks.
Mills explains, “Neither of us had ever used one and couldn’t tell how much water was left in them. It was a super hot day and by the tenth pitch, to our horror, we ran out of water.”
Hill adds, “But with half the climb left, we had to keep going.”
