50 Fun Facts About Rock Climbing

Which El Capitan route did Alex Honnold free solo, the first ropeless ascent of the wall?

Freerider: Honnold soloed the 5.13a line on El Capitan's southwest face, a free variation of the Salathé Wall, with cameras rolling for the documentary Free Solo.

What did Free Solo, the 2018 film about Honnold's climb, win at the 91st Academy Awards?

Best Documentary Feature: directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin collected the Oscar in February 2019, the film having also won the BAFTA for Best Documentary.

What equipment may a free soloist use when climbing without ropes or protection?

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.

How long did the first ascent of the Nose on El Capitan take Warren Harding's team in 1958?

47 days of climbing spread over 18 months, using fixed ropes in siege style; Warren Harding, Wayne Merry and George Whitmore topped out on 12 November 1958 after a final 12-day push.

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

Lynn Hill freed the Nose with Brooke Sandahl over four days in 1993, then returned in 1994 to free it in under 24 hours.

How many days did Caldwell and Jorgeson's first free climb of the Dawn Wall take in 2015?

19 days: Caldwell and Jorgeson lived on the wall from late December until topping out on 14 January 2015, freeing all 32 pitches of the route.

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: a table-saw accident in 2001 severed it; surgeons reattached it, but Caldwell had the stiff, useless finger amputated to climb better.

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

Kyrgyzstan: Caldwell, Beth Rodden, Jason Singer Smith and John Dickey were seized in the Kara-Su valley by Islamic militants and escaped after six days.

Adam Ondra's route Silence, the first climb graded 9c (5.15d), is in a cave in which country?

Norway: Silence climbs the roof of the Hanshelleren cave at Flatanger, on the country's west coast; Ondra spent years on the project before his redpoint.

In which year did Ondra make the first ascent of Silence?

2017: Ondra redpointed Silence on 3 September 2017 after bolting the line years earlier while establishing Change, the world's first 9b+, in the same cave.

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

Realization/Biographie: Sharma's July 2001 redpoint at Céüse in the French Alps, after months of effort, was the first route widely accepted as 9a+ (5.15a).

Wolfgang Güllich's 1991 route Action Directe was the world's first at which grade?

9a (5.14d): Action Directe in the Frankenjura, with its brutal one-finger pockets, was the first route given 9a; Güllich trained for it on the campus board he invented.

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

Sylvester Stallone: Güllich performed the climbing for Stallone's character Gabe Walker; he died in a car crash in August 1992, the year before the film's release.

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

The Sierra Club: members of its Southern California rock climbing section worked out the system at Tahquitz Peak, extending the older Sierra Club class 1-5 scale.

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

5.10: once climbs harder than 5.9 appeared in the 1960s, the scale was extended to 5.10, 5.11 and beyond, each subdivided a to d.

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-system used to grade boulder problems is also known by what name?

The Hueco scale: John 'Vermin' Sherman devised the V-grades while bouldering at Hueco Tanks in the early 1990s, the V standing for his nickname.

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

Finland: the granite block at Lappnor, east of Helsinki, took Hukkataival four years of effort before he sent it in October 2016.

In bouldering, what are 'crash pads'?

Foam mats laid on the ground for falls: crash pads, which spread from the 1990s, let boulderers attempt high problems that were once too dangerous without a rope.

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

Fontainebleau: Parisian alpinists began training on the forest's sandstone boulders around 1900, and its devotees are known as Bleausards.

In sport climbing, what does the lead climber 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.

Climbing chalk is powdered what?

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 company introduced the Grigri in 1991; a cam inside pinches the rope under a sudden load, assisting the belayer's brake hand.

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

Air traffic controller: Black Diamond gave its tubular belay device the ATC name as a joke about controlling a climber's descent; it has no moving parts.

Modern climbing shoes are known for a tight fit, sticky rubber soles and what 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: sport climbing debuted at the pandemic-delayed Games in August 2021 at the Aomi Urban Sports Park, with Spain's Alberto Ginés López taking the first men's gold.

How many disciplines were combined into the single Olympic climbing event in Tokyo?

Three: lead, speed and bouldering were rolled into one combined event, with each climber's three placings multiplied together to produce the final ranking.

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

Speed became a separate event from boulder-and-lead: Paris 2024 awarded four climbing golds instead of the previous Games' two, with speed decided by head-to-head races on a standardised wall.

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

Janja Garnbret won the women's combined gold at the pandemic-delayed Games in 2021, the first Olympic climbing title awarded to a woman, and the boulder-and-lead gold in Paris in 2024.

In which year did Adam Ondra win World Championship titles in both lead and bouldering?

2014: Ondra took the lead world title in Gijón, Spain, and the bouldering title in Munich, Germany, in the same season.

Which country hosted the first climbing World Championships, in 1991?

Germany: the inaugural World Championships were held in Frankfurt in 1991, with the lead titles going to François Legrand and Susi Good.

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

Leeds: Robinson, a physical education lecturer at the University of Leeds, set natural rock holds into a corridor wall in 1964 for winter training.

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

Saxony: the Elbe Sandstone towers of Saxon Switzerland saw free climbing from the 1860s, and Rudolf Fehrmann's 1913 rules banning metal protection shaped its ethics for a century.

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

Kalymnos: di Bari's bolting of the island's limestone cliffs turned it into one of Europe's busiest sport climbing destinations, with thousands of routes added in the following decades.

In 2006 Chris Sharma free soloed the first-ever 9a+ deep-water solo route, Es Pontàs, which is where?

Mallorca: Es Pontàs is a natural rock arch off the island's south-east coast near Santanyí; Sharma's ascent, with a huge dyno over the sea, was filmed for King Lines.

In which US state is the bouldering area Hueco Tanks?

Texas: Hueco Tanks State Park, just east of El Paso, is a cluster of syenite rock hills famous for winter bouldering and Native American pictographs.

Which climber's ropeless Yosemite ascents around 1980 made him the first free-solo 'superstar'?

John Bachar's ropeless ascents in Yosemite, including the Nabisco Wall in 1979, made him the sport's first famous free soloist; he died in a soloing fall in 2009.

In 2005 Tommy Caldwell and Beth Rodden became the first couple to do what?

Free climb the Nose: in October 2005 Rodden and Caldwell freed the 31-pitch route together; two days later Caldwell went back and freed it again in under 12 hours.

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

3 hours 56 minutes: Honnold started at dawn on 3 June and topped out before mid-morning, with Jimmy Chin's cameras rolling for the documentary Free Solo.

How tall is the standardised wall used for competition speed-climbing world records?

15 metres: the IFSC speed wall is 15 metres high with a 5-degree overhang and identical holds everywhere, so times are comparable; by 2024 the best men had gone under five seconds.

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

Poland: Mirosław, from Lublin, won the Olympic speed gold in Paris in 2024 after setting the 6.06-second world record in the seeding round.

Adam Ondra's 2016 second free ascent of the Dawn Wall, leading every pitch, took how many days?

Eight: Ondra topped out on 21 November 2016 after eight days on the wall, having led every pitch with Pavel Blažek jumaring behind him.

At what age did Adam Ondra redpoint his first sport route graded 5.14d?

Thirteen: Ondra redpointed Martin Krpan at Mišja Peč in Slovenia in 2006, when he was 13 years old, his first route at the grade.

The wide cracks on pitches 8-11 of the Nose are named for pitons improvised from what?

Stove legs: Harding's team drove pitons made from the legs of a junkyard stove into the wide cracks on pitches 8 to 11 during the 1958 siege.

Royal Robbins' team made the 1960 second ascent of the Nose, without sieging, in how many days?

Seven: Royal Robbins, Chuck Pratt, Tom Frost and Joe Fitschen climbed the route in a single seven-day push in 1960, using the 125 bolts left from the first ascent.

In what year did Beverly Johnson and Sibylle Hechtel become the first all-female team up El Capitan?

1973: Johnson and Hechtel climbed the Triple Direct, which links the lower Salathé Wall, the Muir Wall and the upper Nose, in the first all-female ascent of El Capitan.

From which sport did John Gill, 'the father of modern bouldering', bring his training?

Gymnastics: Gill, a competitive rope-climbing gymnast in the 1950s, brought gymnastic strength training and dynamic movement to bouldering and devised his own B1-B3 grading scale.

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.