Climbing & Alpinism
The Golden Age of Alpinism through Everest, K2, Yosemite Stonemasters, Lynn Hill's Nose free-climb, Alex Honnold El Cap free-solo, sport-climbing into the Olympics.
Part of Extreme Sports
19 moments in this segment.
- - First ascent of the Matterhorn. Edward Whymper's party summits the Matterhorn, four die on the descent. The accident plays in newspapers worldwide; the Golden Age of Alpinism ends.
- - Hillary + Tenzing summit Everest. Edmund Hillary (NZ) and Tenzing Norgay (Nepal) reach the summit of Everest. The first confirmed ascent of the world's highest peak.
- - First ascent of K2. Italian expedition led by Ardito Desio summits K2, the world's second-highest and most technically demanding 8000er.
- - Ueli Steck - Eiger speed record. Ueli Steck climbs the Eiger North Face in 2 hours 47 minutes, half the previous record. Speed alpinism becomes a recognised discipline.
- - Caldwell + Jorgeson - Dawn Wall free ascent. Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson make the first free ascent of El Capitan's Dawn Wall (5.14d) after 19 days on the wall. The hardest big-wall free climb in history at the time.
- - Alex Honnold - Free Solo of El Capitan. Alex Honnold free-solos El Capitan via Freerider (5.13a), no rope, no gear. The film Free Solo wins the 2019 Academy Award for Best Documentary.
- - Nirmal Purja - 14 8000ers in 6 months. Nirmal Purja summits all 14 8000-metre peaks in 6 months 6 days, destroying the previous 7-year record. Subject of the 2021 Netflix film 14 Peaks.
- - Sport climbing at the Olympics. Sport climbing debuts at the Tokyo Olympics combining lead + speed + boulder. Alberto Ginés López (ESP) and Janja Garnbret (SLO) take first gold.
- - Messner - Everest solo without oxygen. Reinhold Messner solos Everest without supplemental oxygen via the North Face. Considered the greatest single climb in history.
- - Pete Whittaker - first ascent of Crown Royale. Pete Whittaker makes the first ascent of Crown Royale at Profilveggen in Norway, one of the hardest trad routes he has climbed, proposed at 9a. Whittaker discusses the difficulty of grading a line at that standard.
- - Lynn Hill - first free ascent of the Nose. Lynn Hill becomes the first person to free-climb El Capitan's Nose route (5.14a). "It goes, boys" she radios, the line becomes climbing-history canon.
- - Bury a Friend - a bold line on Rap Rock. Adrian Montaño on the first ascent of Bury a Friend, a 140-foot 5.13 on the East Face of Rap Rock with a poorly protected opening section. The route shares a start with a 1984 Ed Drummond line.
- - Adam Ondra on DNA in the Verdon. Adam Ondra begins work on DNA, the 9c route established by Seb Bouin in the Verdon Gorge in 2022. Only a handful of routes in the world carry that grade.
- - Vision Quest - a new deep-water solo. Footage released on Chris Sharma's channel of the first ascent of Vision Quest, graded 9a/9a+ and described there as one of the five hardest deep-water solos in the world alongside Es Pontas, Alasha, Big Fish and Black Pearl. The ascent was made on 16 December 2024 and the film appeared in January 2026.
- - Nathaniel Coleman - No One Mourns the Wicked. Nathaniel Coleman completes the long-discussed low start to Defying Gravity, proposed at V17, in a film released by The North Face. The problem links an already hard boulder into one of the hardest single moves in climbing.
- - Will Bosi - Remote Working at Sean's Roof. Will Bosi makes the first ascent of Remote Working, an 8C boulder problem at Sean's Roof in the Peak District, filmed in June 2025. Bosi is among the strongest boulderers currently active.
- - Edu Marín on the Trango Towers. Edu Marín, climbing with his brother and father, works a line on the Nameless Tower in Pakistan's Karakoram, the largest free-standing rock tower in the world. Big-wall climbing at altitude sits between the archive's alpinism and its rock-climbing strands.
- - Le Bombé Bleu - a Buoux project climbed at last. Erwan Legrand makes the first ascent of Le Bombé Bleu at Buoux on 11 February 2026, a route equipped by Marc Le Menestrel in 1991 and left unclimbed for decades. Buoux was the centre of European sport climbing in the late 1980s.
- - Double Helix - an alpine first ascent. Keenan Griscom completes Double Helix at 5.14a after an alpine season of attempts on a line bolted several years earlier and left dormant. Hard free climbing at altitude has become a distinct strand of modern first ascents.
