Hill Climbs

Full throttle

No Traction. All Heart.

Hill climb racing is what happens when you take a motorcycle, point it up a wall of earth, and say, “Good luck.” It’s brutal. It’s ridiculous. It’s glorious.
And for Lilly Farrow, it was a challenge too good to ignore.
She didn’t just watch riders go vertical. She gave them the hill to climb.

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STEEL BEGINS IN THE FORGE

What Is Hill Climb Racing?

Hill climbs are exactly what they sound like: a rider, a dirt slope, and a stopwatch. But that simple formula births chaos. Riders launch from the base of a steep incline and attempt to reach the top as fast and upright as possible.

  • Courses often reached grades of 60–70%
  • Engine torque was everything. So was the rider’s balance.
  • Most runs ended in wipeouts, wheelies, or a spectacular crash

Spectators lined the course, gasped at every fall, and cheered for anyone who even made it halfway. These weren’t races of precision, they were battles of will.

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STEEL BEGINS IN THE FORGE

Lilly’s Role: Building the Impossible

Hill climbs perfectly matched Lilly’s style: tough, community-driven, and a little insane.

She:

  • Helped identify and prepare climb sites on the edge of towns and forests
  • Recruited local mechanics and riders hungry to test their builds
  • Promoted the events with homemade flyers, word-of-mouth, and dealership buzz
  • Turned proceeds into charity for struggling families or civic causes

These weren’t just stunts. They were town-wide events. And Lilly made sure they had purpose.

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STEEL BEGINS IN THE FORGE

Famous Hills, Famous Fails

Legendary Riders

  • Paul Anderson – Known for vertical launches and even harder landings
  • Louise Beckett – One of the first women to ride Lilly’s climbs (and nearly reach the summit)

Notable Climb Locations:

  • Muskegon Hill, Michigan – The “Mount Everest” of Midwest climbing
  • Peoria’s Bluff Run – Hosted by Lilly’s promotion team in the late ’20s
  • Wichita Heights – Site of the now-legendary double tandem climb attempt

Many of these names never made the national circuit. But in the local lore of hill climbing, they’re giants.

Steeled by life. Tempered by times.

A Racing Format That Endured

Hill climb racing has never gone mainstream, but it’s never gone away.
Today, it survives (and thrives) in:

  • AMA Pro Hillclimb Series
  • Outlaw events in Appalachia and the Rockies
  • Custom bike builds engineered for insane vertical torque

Every time a rider guns it toward a vertical face, they ride with echoes of those first climbs and Lilly’s legacy at their back.

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Sub Headline

Why It Mattered

Hill climbs weren’t just about speed. They were about strength.

  • Strength to try when most wouldn’t
  • Strength to get up after the crash
  • Strength to believe a woman could organize the damn thing in the first place

Lilly didn’t just build climbs. She built belief.

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“Rally Points”

  • Hill climbs were extreme, local, and wildly popular events in early American motorsport.
  • Lilly helped scout locations, organize riders, and promote climbs as community showcases.
  • Many of her events included charity tie-ins and drew record-breaking crowds.
  • The spirit of the hill climb, gritty, fearless, and slightly mad, is the same spirit Lilly carried in every part of her life
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