History of rock climbing

rdf:langString History of rock climbing

rdf:langString The following is an overview of the key milestones in the history of rock climbing from its origins in late 19th-century Europe. It covers the sub-disciplines of rock climbing: single-pitch climbing (traditional climbing and sport climbing), big wall climbing (including aid climbing), bouldering, and free soloing (including deep-water soloing). It does not cover mountaineering, and disciplines that involve ice climbing such as alpine climbing (it does include big wall climbing in the Alps), or mixed climbing. Key developments of equipment and techniques are also chronicled. The three core disciplines of rock climbing: bouldering, single-pitch climbing, and big wall (ie multi-pitch) climbing, can trace their origins to late 19th-century Europe. Bouldering started in Fontainebleau, and was advanced by Pierre Allain in the 1930s, and John Gill in the 1950s. Big wall climbing started in the Dolomites, and was spread across the Alps in the 1930s by climbers such as Emilio Comici and Riccardo Cassin, and in the 1950s by Walter Bonatti, before reaching Yosemite where it was led in the 1950s to 1970s by climbers such as Royal Robbins. Single-pitch climbing started simultaneously pre-1900 in the Lake District and in Saxony, and by the 1970s had spread widely with leaders such as Ron Fawcett (Britain), Ron Kauk (USA), Bernd Arnold (Germany), and Patrick Berhault (France). Being a free solo exercise with no artificial aid or climbing protection, bouldering has remained largely consistent since its origins. Single-pitch climbing stopped using artificial aid by the early 20th-century with the adoption of "free climbing". Big wall climbing took longer to adopt free climbing as many prime routes defied attempts to even aid climb them for decades. Climbing protection was needed for single-pitch and big-wall free climbing, and was inserted into the route while climbing; this is called "traditional climbing". By the 1980s, French pioneers like Patrick Edlinger wanted to climb rock faces in Buoux and Verdon that had no cracks in which to insert traditional climbing protection. They pre-drilled bolts into routes for climbing protection (but not as artificial aid); this became known as "sport climbing". It led to a dramatic increase in climbing standards, the development of competition climbing (initially dominated by the French), and the arrival of "professional" rock climbers. By the end of the 20th-century, leading sport climbers realized that the hardest sport climbs were really combinations of bouldering-moves and that some of the best challenges lay in free climbing more extreme big walls; this led to greater cross-over amongst the three disciplines. Leading climbers such as Jerry Moffatt, Wolfgang Güllich, Alexander Huber, Fred Nicole, Chris Sharma, Adam Ondra, and Tommy Caldwell set records in several of these disciplines. In addition, Güllich and Huber made ever bolder single-pitch free solo climbs, while Sharma pushed standards in deep-water soloing; Alex Honnold's big wall free soloing was turned into the Oscar-winning film, Free Solo. In 2016 the International Olympic Committee announced that competition climbing would be a medal sport in the 2020 Summer Olympics. Female rock climbing developed later in the 20th-century, but by the 1970s and 1980s, climbers such as Lynn Hill and Catherine Destivelle were quickly closing the gap to the standard of routes being climbed by the leading men. In 1993, Hill made the first free ascent of The Nose on El Capitan, one of the most sought-after big wall climbing prizes that had resisted all prior attempts. By the 21st-century, Josune Bereziartu, Angela Eiter and Ashima Shiraishi, had closed the gap to the highest sport and boulder climbing grades achieved by men to just one/two notches, while Beth Rodden had completely closed the gap for traditional climbing grades.