The birth of rock climbing as a sport.

Napes Needle, 1886

Napes Needle is a rock pinnacle on Great Gable in the English Lake District. Wikipedia says Walter Parry Haskett Smith, an English barrister (born 28 August 1859, died 11 March 1946), made its first ascent in 1886, alone and without ropes, spikes or ladders. Editor's notes in the Fell and Rock Climbing Club (FRCC) journal, seen as a search summary, put the climb in June 1886 and say he left a white handkerchief on the top.

According to Wikipedia, Haskett Smith had first come to Wasdale Head in 1881 and spent two months there. Wikipedia also says Owen Glynne Jones took over from him as the leading British rock climber after 1895.

The ascent became a symbol. An FRCC talk announcement from 2018, seen as a search summary, says Haskett Smith is perhaps best known as the "Father of Rock Climbing" because of it. UKClimbing, also seen as a search summary, says he was taken up the Needle again in 1936, aged 74, for the fiftieth anniversary, with a crowd watching. That age does not fit the 1859 birth date Wikipedia gives, which would make him 76 in 1936, so one of the two sources is likely wrong.

Saxon Switzerland

Saxon Switzerland, the Elbe sandstone area in Germany, has its own claim. Wikipedia calls it Germany's largest rock climbing region and its oldest outside the Alps, with more than 1,100 peaks and over 17,000 routes.

• 1864: gymnasts from Bad Schandau made the first modern ascent of the Falkenstein, using ladders and tree trunks. Wikipedia and the regional tourism board (seen as a search summary) both treat this as the start of climbing in the region.
• 1874: two climbers from Pirna, named by Wikipedia as O. Ufer and H. Frick, climbed the Monch without artificial aids.
• 1905: the Barbarine pillar on the Pfaffenstein was first climbed. Wikipedia says it has been closed to climbing since 1975.

The tourism board calls Saxon Switzerland the birthplace of free climbing. That is the board's own description; SummitPost, also seen as a search summary, says many consider it so.

The Saxon rules

Saxony has its own local climbing rules. According to Wikipedia, their basic principles were worked out before 1900, mainly by Oscar Schuster. The core idea, Wikipedia says, is to give up artificial aids for overcoming gravity. Under the rules, climbers protect with knotted slings rather than nuts, cams or pitons, chalk is forbidden, and ring bolts may be placed only by the first ascensionist during the first ascent, with any later additions decided by a commission of the Saxon Climbers' Federation (SBB).

When the rules were first written down is disputed:

• 1913, according to Wikipedia, in a guidebook by Rudolf Fehrmann.
• 1910, according to a search summary of the tourism board's page, which we could not open.

Saxony also has its own grade scale. Wikipedia says it uses Roman numerals, with VII and above split into a, b and c, and gives XIc as the hardest grade climbed there. How it sits beside other systems is covered on grading systems.

Which came first?

The two claims compete, and our research did not find a primary source that settles them.

The British claim has its own sceptics: a search summary recorded one British source remarking that the 1886 claim is made too often. The Needle's 1886 date is later than both Saxon dates, so the disagreement turns on what counts as the start of a sport, not on which climb happened first.

Paul Preuss and the piton dispute

LaCrux (19 August 2026) says Paul Preuss was born in 1886 in Altaussee, Austria, and made around 1,200 ascents in a few years, many of them first ascents. Wikipedia gives his dates as 19 August 1886 to 3 October 1913.

In the summer of 1911, LaCrux says, Preuss published an essay in the German Alpine Journal on artificial aids on high mountain routes, questioning the use of pitons. The argument that followed is known as the Mauerhakenstreit, the piton dispute.

• Preuss's position, as LaCrux paraphrases it: difficulties should be overcome by the climber's own ability, pitons should at most serve as a safeguard, and aids should not be used on the way down either. In his view, a climber's skill set the limit of what was allowed.
• His opponents, chiefly Tita Piaz and the guidebook author Franz Nieberl, argued that a piton could save a life at a critical moment and that Preuss failed to separate sensible use from misuse.

Climbs LaCrux lists for Preuss include the north face of the Planspitze (1908), a solo of the Totenkirchl west face (1911) and the Preuss Crack on the Kleine Zinne (September 1911, with Paul Relly).

As published history: LaCrux says Preuss died in early October 1913, aged 27, on the Northern Mandlkogel in the Dachstein range, while attempting its unclimbed north face alone. The exact cause was never established.

His ideas outlived him. According to LaCrux, Reinhold Messner republished Preuss's writings in the 1960s and called him the intellectual father of modern free climbing, and the International Paul Preuss Society gives a Paul Preuss Prize for ascents made "by fair means".

The same argument about fixed hardware returned in later decades, in the move to clean climbing and in the bolt wars.