Climbing History
A selected history of climbing and mountaineering through the climbers, climbs and media.
4232 Climbers
8183 Climbs
21844 Ascents
Featured
John Arran
John Arran is a very accomplished trad climber with adventurous first ascents across the UK, North and South America and beyond, often climbed onsight. Spending 3 years in the US in the 80s, John onsight soloed multipitch routes up to 5.12, a level that has not been surpassed today. In the late 90s he dabbled in gritstone headpointing, climbing The Zone and the unrepeated Doctor Dolittle E10.
On 20th June 2003 John and his partner for the day Shane Ohly soloed or descended 536 routes in a mammoth single day. [1] Following in the footsteps of Ron Fawcett's Arran climbed 100 extremes in a day in 2001, all at Stanage with 55 of them onsight. [2,3]
John helped pioneer big wall free climbing in Venezuela, culminating in Rainbow Jambaia (E7) on Angel Falls, one the most spectacular hard big walls in the world.
References
[1] On The Edge Issue 130, page 11
[2] On The Edge Issue 113, page 32
John Arran is a very accomplished trad climber with adventurous first ascents across the UK, North and South America and beyond, often climbed onsight. Spending 3 years in the US in the 80s, John onsight soloed multipitch routes up to 5.12, a level that has not been surpassed today. In the late 90s he dabbled in gritstone headpointing, climbing The Zone and the unrepeated Doctor Dolittle E10.
On 20th June 2003 John and his partner for the day Shane Ohly soloed or descended 536 routes in a mammoth single day. [1] Following in the footsteps of Ron Fawcett's Arran climbed 100 extremes in a day in 2001, all at Stanage with 55 of them onsight. [2,3]
John helped pioneer big wall free climbing in Venezuela, culminating in Rainbow Jambaia (E7) on Angel Falls, one the most spectacular hard big walls in the world.
References
[1] On The Edge Issue 130, page 11
[2] On The Edge Issue 113, page 32
Pics + Vids
Featuring 10607 pictures and videos. Try searching for a climber, climb or summit to see pics and videos.
Louis Lancaster on All Out 8c
Jan-luca Posch on Air Star 8B
Adam Ondra on Wolverine 8B+
Drew Ruana on Bookkeeping 8C+
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Explore
Fancy a look around? You can browse by climber or by climbs, or you can check out some lists. For example
- All sport ascents of 9b or above
- British women who have climbed 7C or above
- British men who have climbed 8c or above
Podcasts
Featuring 4292 podcasts. Try searching for a climber to see podcasts with them, or check out some of these podcasts:
- Heather Weidner on The Mountain People Podcast (2023)
- Ash Wolsey-Heard and Simon Rawlinson on StoneLine Podcast (2025)
- Sonnie Trotter on The Nugget (2026)
- Emil Abrahamsson on The Struggle Climbing Show (2026)
Library
Featuring 16134 items in the library. Try a search to see what you can find, or check out these library items:
- Hard Rock: the Life and Climbs of Ken Wilson (2017) Film
- Alpine Journal 1969 108-122 Maden Logans (1969) Journal
- Southern Culm Bouldering (2013) Guidebook
Recent updates
Higher up, where you had to place a bit more of your own gear, I had some doubts about whether Adam had much experience with that. But he came up with a very clever way of getting around his lack of experience. He simply didn't place any cams and climbed from bolt to bolt, or from a bolt to a piton, sometimes with twenty meter runouts [laughs]. [1, translated]
References
Higher up, where you had to place a bit more of your own gear, I had some doubts about whether Adam had much experience with that. But he came up with a very clever way of getting around his lack of experience. He simply didn't place any cams and climbed from bolt to bolt, or from a bolt to a piton, sometimes with twenty meter runouts. [1, translated]