So I usually post about adventures at sea. But these two - son and daughter in law of friends of Marilyn from tai chi - are sailors too. They circumnavigated in a 35 foot boat. We'd heard about that but only recently discovered their history as climbers. As parents of two, she climbs, the other doesn't - not anymore. Open ocean is low risk for this pair.
Liza Mills has climbed 25 Grade V (or harder) walls, had epics with Lynn Hill, sailed across the world in a 35-foot sailboat, taught art in a city dubbed its state’s “murder capital,” and, at 48, still climbs 5.13. And she has big plans ahead.
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.”