47 Fun Facts About Rock Climbing

Which El Capitan route did Alex Honnold climb without a rope in June 2017, a first for the wall?

Freerider: Honnold abandoned a first ropeless attempt on the route's lower slabs, then came back on 3 June 2017 and climbed the whole 5.13a line alone.

Which Oscar did the climbing film Free Solo win in 2019?

Best Documentary Feature: afraid that the cameras might push Honnold into a fatal mistake, co-director Jimmy Chin's crew never asked him when he planned to climb.

Which gear does a free soloist still carry on a climb?

Shoes and chalk: a free soloist climbs with nothing but rock shoes and a chalk bag; any rope, harness, bolts or pads would make it a different discipline.

Roughly how tall is El Capitan's tallest face from base to summit?

About 3,000 feet: El Capitan rises roughly 900 metres from the Yosemite Valley floor, a sheer granite monolith left standing by glaciers because its rock has few joints.

Warren Harding's team fixed ropes between camps for over a year on the Nose's 1958 first ascent, an approach called what?

Siege tactics: the team came and went from July 1957 until Harding toiled through a final night up the last overhanging headwall and topped out at 6 am in November 1958.

Who made the first free ascent of the Nose in 1993, famously declaring 'It goes, boys!'?

Lynn Hill freed the Nose in 1993, then came back a year later and freed the whole route again in a single day, reaching the top in 23 hours.

Which El Capitan route did Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson first free climb in January 2015?

The Dawn Wall: Jorgeson fell for days on the traverse of pitch 15, and Caldwell, already past it, said he could not imagine finishing without him; the two topped out together after 19 days.

Tommy Caldwell climbs some of the world's hardest rock despite losing most of which body part to a table saw?

His left index finger: doctors reattached it after the 2001 accident, but it was later removed for good, and Caldwell rebuilt his climbing around the stump.

In 2000 Caldwell and three other climbers were held hostage by militants in which country?

Kyrgyzstan: rebels held the four Americans for six days, until Caldwell pulled their lone guard off a cliff edge by his gun strap and the group fled to government soldiers.

Adam Ondra's 2017 route Silence climbs the roof of a cave in which country?

Norway: Silence runs through the roof of the Hanshelleren cave at Flatanger, where Ondra fixed the bolts in 2013 and then kept travelling back until he could climb it.

Adam Ondra's Silence was the first route proposed at which grade?

9c (5.15d): after clipping the anchor Ondra said he could not even scream, only hang on the rope in tears, and the climb he had called Project Hard became Silence.

Which route did Chris Sharma redpoint in 2001 as the world's first consensus 9a+?

Realization is the name Sharma gave the line at Céüse in France; many still call it Biographie, because French custom lets the climber who bolted a route name it.

Wolfgang Güllich's 1991 route Action Directe is regarded as the first climb of which grade?

9a (5.14d): to train for the route Güllich invented the campus board, and the tool he built for one climb became standard for building finger strength.

Güllich worked as a climbing double for which actor in the 1993 film Cliffhanger?

Sylvester Stallone: Güllich was one of the film's two main climbing doubles, but he died after a car crash in August 1992 and never saw it reach cinemas.

The Yosemite Decimal System was devised in the 1950s by members of which organisation?

The Sierra Club: its Southern California climbers worked the scale out at Tahquitz in the 1950s, so the Yosemite Decimal System was not devised in Yosemite at all.

In the Yosemite Decimal System, at which grade do the letters a, b, c and d start being added?

5.10: the scale was built to run from 5.0 to 5.9, so when harder climbs arrived in the 1960s it broke its own decimal logic, and letters a to d now split each grade above.

What do the R and X suffixes on a Yosemite Decimal System grade warn of?

Poor protection and dangerous falls: borrowed from film ratings, R marks a runout route where a fall could cause injury and X one where a fall could be fatal.

The V in bouldering's V-grades comes from which nickname of the scale's inventor, John Sherman?

Vermin: Sherman, known as Verm, built the open-ended scale to rate the boulder problems his own circle was climbing, then published it in his 1991 guidebook.

Nalle Hukkataival climbed Burden of Dreams, the first V17 boulder problem, in which country?

Finland: the short granite problem at Lappnor waited years for a repeat, which came from Will Bosi after he trained at home in Britain on a 3D-printed replica of its holds.

The forest around which French town is famous as the birthplace of bouldering?

Fontainebleau: alpinists from nearby Paris have trained on the forest's sandstone boulders since the 19th century, and its regulars go by the name Bleausards.

In sport climbing, what does a leader clip the rope into for protection?

Pre-drilled bolts, via quickdraws: sport routes are equipped with permanent bolts, so the leader clips a quickdraw to each hanger; the style grew up in 1980s France on blank limestone.

In traditional climbing, spring-loaded camming devices are commonly nicknamed what?

Friends: Ray Jardine's spring-loaded cams, sold from 1978 under that name, fit parallel cracks that nuts could not, raising the grades trad climbers could safely attempt.

Despite its name, climbing chalk is a powder of which compound?

Magnesium carbonate: the white powder absorbs sweat from the fingertips for a drier grip; liquid chalk suspends the same compound in alcohol that evaporates on the hands.

The Grigri, one of the most popular assisted-braking belay devices, is made by which company?

Petzl: the French firm launched the Grigri in 1991 and named it after an African good-luck charm; inside, a cam pinches the rope when a climber's weight comes onto it suddenly.

The tubular belay device known as the ATC takes its name from what?

Air traffic controller: Black Diamond's name for its simple tube caught on so widely that climbers now call almost any tubular belay device an ATC.

Performance climbing shoes pair a tight fit and sticky rubber with which shape?

An asymmetrical downturn: performance shoes curve the toes downward and inward toward the big toe, concentrating power on small footholds, especially on overhangs.

Competition climbing made its Olympic debut at which Games?

Tokyo 2020: at the delayed Games in August 2021, Spain's Alberto Ginés López took the first men's gold after winning the speed race and placing only seventh in bouldering.

How did climbing's first Olympic event combine each athlete's three discipline placings?

Multiplied them: the lowest product won, so finishing first in any one discipline cut a climber's whole score down to the product of the other two placings.

For Paris 2024, how was the Olympic climbing format changed?

Speed got its own medals: Paris doubled climbing's golds from two to four by separating speed from a combined boulder-and-lead event.

Who became the first female Olympic climbing champion and repeated in 2024?

Janja Garnbret of Slovenia took the first women's Olympic climbing gold in 2021 and kept it in Paris; in 2019 she had won every Bouldering World Cup event of the season.

In competition lead climbing, what decides a climber's score on a route?

The highest hold reached: each climber gets a single attempt and waits in isolation beforehand, so that nobody can watch a rival and copy the moves.

Don Robinson built the first modern climbing wall in 1964 in a corridor at which university?

Leeds: Robinson, a physical education lecturer there, pressed pieces of real rock into a corridor wall, the modest start of the indoor climbing wall.

Single-pitch rock climbing began before 1900 in the Lake District and in which German region?

Saxony: on the soft sandstone towers of Saxon Switzerland, Rudolf Fehrmann's 1913 guidebook set the first binding rules, natural holds only, to protect the rock.

Which Greek island became a sport climbing hotspot after Andrea di Bari's 1997 bolting?

Kalymnos: di Bari was the first to see what its cliffs offered, and rock the islanders had held in low esteem turned one of Greece's less-favoured islands into a climbing mecca.

Chris Sharma's 2006 deep-water solo Es Pontàs crosses a sea arch off which Mediterranean island?

Mallorca: Sharma fell into the sea about 50 times from the route's seven-foot leap between holds before he held it, and he finished the climb in September 2006.

In which US state is the bouldering area Hueco Tanks?

Texas: Hueco Tanks, near El Paso, is named for the hollows in its rock that trap rainwater, which drew people to these desert hills for thousands of years.

Which Yosemite free soloist of the years around 1980 offered $10,000 to anyone who could follow him for a day?

John Bachar pinned up the offer in 1981 and nobody took it; after decades of ropeless climbing he died in a fall while soloing in 2009.

Which climber swapped leads with Tommy Caldwell when the pair free climbed the Nose in October 2005?

Beth Rodden and Caldwell, then married, took four days to become the first couple to free the route; two days later he went back and freed it again in under 12 hours.

How long did Alex Honnold's ropeless ascent of El Capitan take him in June 2017?

About 4 hours: Honnold set off at first light and stood on top at 9.28 am, 3 hours 56 minutes later, on a cliff where roped parties often spend days.

Aleksandra Mirosław, who set a 6.06-second speed record in 2024, climbs for which country?

Poland: Mirosław, from Lublin, lowered her own world record to 6.06 seconds in qualifying in Paris, then won the first Olympic gold awarded for women's speed climbing.

Which knot is the standard way to tie a climbing rope to a harness?

Figure-eight: threaded back on itself through the harness, it is secure and simple to tie; the price is that it can jam tight after holding a heavy fall.

What do climbers call the hardest section of a route?

The crux: a route's grade is often set by this one passage, so a single desperate move can make an otherwise gentle climb count as hard.

A crack system on the Nose is named for the wide pitons Warren Harding's team improvised from what?

Stove legs: the first-ascent team hammered sawn-off legs of wood stoves into cracks too wide for ordinary pitons, and the Stoveleg Cracks still carry the name.

Whose four-man team made the 1960 second ascent of the Nose in one continuous seven-day push?

Royal Robbins, with Joe Fitschen, Chuck Pratt and Tom Frost, climbed in a single week what had taken the first-ascent team more than a year of comings and goings.

What do climbers call leading a route cleanly on the first try with no advance knowledge of it?

An onsight: watch someone else climb it first, or take a tip about the moves, and the very same clean first try counts only as a flash.

From which sport did the bouldering pioneer John Gill bring his training and style?

Gymnastics: Gill, a competitive rope climber in the 1950s, treated a boulder as apparatus, bringing dynamic moves to rock and prizing form and grace over merely getting up.

Which British climber won men's combined boulder-and-lead gold at the Paris 2024 Olympics?

Toby Roberts, aged 19, overtook Japan's Sorato Anraku in the final lead round to win Britain's first Olympic climbing medal.