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In 1993 Lynn Hill, with Brooke Sandahl, made the first free ascent of the Nose on El Capitan, a route strong male climbers had tried and failed to free. She solved the crux Changing Corners pitch with an improvised sequence of stems, backsteps, and hip twists that no one had found, and after it she declared, "It goes, boys." In 1994 she returned and free-climbed the whole route in under 24 hours.
A climbing sequence is not a fixed solution. It is the fit between a particular body and a particular piece of rock. Hill's small hands and short reach were drawbacks on some moves, but they let her fit into thin cracks and find positions that bigger climbers could not use. Copying someone else's beta is often the wrong strategy, because a problem that looks impossible may be impossible only for the body that defined it.
In 1989 at Buoux, France, Hill was interrupted while tying into her harness and never finished the knot. She climbed the route, leaned back to be lowered, and fell about 72 feet. A tree broke her fall, and she survived with a dislocated elbow and other injuries. The episode shows that a safety routine done automatically is most likely to fail at the moment it is interrupted, because habit hides the missing step.
Free climbing uses ropes and gear only to catch a fall, never to help the climber move upward. The achievement therefore lies in the style of the ascent, not in reaching the top. Seen this way, a route already climbed with aid is still unsolved, and the value of an act depends on refusing shortcuts that would make it easier.
Throughout her account, Hill describes her small size as something that shaped how she climbed, since moves built on long reaches were often not available to her. She tells of adapting by finding her own sequences rather than copying those of larger climbers.