The history of climbing.

This section is a history of how climbing became a sport, how its equipment and ethics changed, and how it came to have federations, gyms and Olympic medals. It is history only. Nothing in it teaches climbing, and the deaths and accidents it mentions are told as published history, not as lessons. For how the sport is organised today, start with Learn.

How these pages are written

• Every date has a source. Each fact is given with the club, federation, land manager, publication, museum or encyclopedia it comes from.
• Disputed firsts get every version. Who gets the credit for Mont Blanc, where rock climbing was born, who invented the climbing nut, the cam and the harness, which route was the first 9a, where the first World Cup was held, and which climbing gym came first are all claimed more than one way. Each version is given with who says it.
• Source errors are shown, not hidden. Where one source gives a date or result that the others contradict, such as ExplorersWeb's 1809 date for Henriette d'Angeville on Mont Blanc or LaCrux's account of the Paris 2024 bouldering medals, the page gives it as that source's claim against the others.
• Wikipedia is named when it stands alone. Where Wikipedia is the only source for a fact, the text says so.
• Unconfirmed claims are marked or left out. Where a page could only be seen as a search summary, or a claim rests on a single source we could not check, the page says so or leaves it out.

The federation that runs competition climbing was called the International Federation of Sport Climbing (IFSC) until 10 December 2025, when it renamed itself World Climbing. These pages use the old name for events before the change.

What is in this section

The story starts in the Alps with early mountaineering: the first ascent of Mont Blanc in 1786, the first women on its summit, the founding of the Alpine Club in 1857 and the Matterhorn in 1865. The birth of rock climbing sets out the rival claims of Napes Needle in England and the sandstone towers of Saxon Switzerland, and Paul Preuss's 1911 argument about pitons. Fontainebleau and bouldering follows bouldering from Alpine training in a French forest to John Gill, chalk, the V scale and the first crash pads.

Yosemite and the big walls covers the Lost Arrow, Half Dome, the Nose, the Salathe Wall, the 1971 bolt dispute and Camp 4. Clean climbing and cams tells how climbers moved from pitons to nuts, and the contested story of the first spring-loaded cams. Sport climbing and bolts runs from the first redpoint in 1975 through France, the first 9a and Smith Rock to the arguments over bolts.

The first climbing walls traces indoor climbing from the 1930s to the first commercial gyms in 1987, and competition climbing goes from Soviet speed events and Sportroccia in 1985 to the Olympic Games. Women in climbing gathers the women's clubs, El Capitan ascents and grade firsts. Access history covers the Kinder Scout trespass, the Access Fund and Devils Tower, and equipment history gives the dates for carabiners, ropes, harnesses, helmets, belay devices, shoes and the CE mark. The timeline puts the main dated events in one table.

Related reading

The federations and clubs as they are today are described on who governs climbing, and the grade scales that appear throughout these pages on grading systems. Current competitions and ascents are in the Events section, and terms used across the site are explained in the glossary.