Best Solo Climber In The World

His incredible lead climbing acumen (I would call him the second-best lead climber in the world), insane strength, and compact frame mean that he has the talent to excel at all three disciplines. He doesn’t have the attention of the mainstream media, nor does he have any indoor climbing accolades, but the 26-year-old Bouin is one of the best sport climbers in the world today. She’s the youngest person to ever climb 5.14d/5.15a, and the second female to ever do so. She has 2 V15 boulder problems to her name, as well as 3 V14’s and a V12 flash.

While other climbers like Tomoa Narasaki, Ashima Shiraishi, and Stefano Ghisolfi have a speciality, Ondra is simply good at everything. With the Olympics coming up, however, Megos has turned his attention more towards plastic holds. He was one of the 8 climbers to qualify at Hachioji, and he remains one of my favourites to medal in 2021.

Famous Free Solo Climbers

The first person to ever clean-sweep an entire IFSC World Cup season – winning all six events in 2019 – and took home the sport’s first gold medal from Tokyo in 2021. She’s now turning her hand to outdoor routes and the prospect of what she could achieve is truly frightening. I’m the owner of Rock Climbing Central and I fell in love with climbing about 5 years ago as soon as my feet touched the wall.

In 2014 Alex did his hardest free solo to date on the route “El Sendero Luminoso” in El Potrero Chico, Mexico. The route is a huge 1,500 foot wall made up of 15 pitches graded 5.12d / 7c overall with the hardest single pitch being 5.12d. It’s known as being an endurance wall of technical climbing on small crimps and delicate foot placements.

With the nature of the sport there have sadly been a few deaths from free soloing. Because most solo climbers will go out alone with the intent for others not to see, usually the exact cause of the fall isn’t clear, or the route wasn’t known. A hold breaking or a foot slip are the most likely causes in most. It is much harder to see routes going down, especially as he down-climbed much of the route at night. He did make it safely even after going off route and backtracking. It took him 8 hours and 30 minutes to get back, with a healthy 15 and a half hours total of climbing.

Climbing Legend Angy Eiter Explains How To Get Into

Because of that, I’ve tried to take into consideration not only the difficulty of the routes climbed, but also the degree to which these climbers pushed the limits for their given generation. By doing so, I’ve created the above list of who I believe the greatest climbers of all time are. Admittedly, putting together a list of the best rock climbers in the world is a difficult task and one that many people will likely disagree with.

“But then at a certain point, I was like, actually, this is kind of hardcore. The via ferrata, it turned out, climbed across a sheer rock wall on a series of rebar rungs set 3,000 feet off the valley floor. He spent years establishing the Dawn Wall, holds a tonne of speed records, and has linked up basically very route in the park.

These well-known landmarks are just scratching the surface of what Yosemite has to offer however, making it a must-visit place for any dedicated climber. Month later, having studied Honnold’s scans, Joseph is on a patchy conference call to Shanghai, China, where Honnold is en route to climb, with ropes, the underbelly of the stalactite-spangled Great Arch of Getu. Unusually for Honnold, his voice betrays tiredness and even stress. A few days earlier, near Index, Washington, he had climbed an easy route to set up ropes for his girlfriend’s parents. It was the most serious accident of his rock climbing life, and it came while he was tied into a rope.

Climbing is in the family – his father was one of the first pro Sherpa guides and his brother has also reached the summit 17 times. He led The North Face climbing team for 26 years, survived an avalanche in 1999 and overcame a heart attack while climbing Lunag Ri in 2016. That year, he also won Climbing Magazine’s Golden Pitons Lifetime Achievement. Polish ski mountaineer Andrzej Bargiel made history on July 22, 2018 after skiing down from the summit of K2.

touching The Void: Would You Cut The Rope To Survive?

She still has some impressive accolades, including two 5.14d ascents and one 5.13d flash, but I would love to see her venture into 5.15 territory in the near future. If she did, she could very well cement herself as one of the best climbers in history. Each move was so hard on their own that the thought of putting them together seemed impossible. He eventually resigned to the fact that the climb probably wasn’t for him. After giving up on the ascent, he started climbing with Adam Ondra, another outstanding climber .

His failure to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics is a bit of a sore spot on his resume, despite the fact that he won 9 lead World Cup medals between 2016 and 2018. If Ghisolfi can ever figure out the competition scene, it could easily vault him into a top-5 placement on this list; even without that, though, he remains one of the best climbers of this generation. He wasn’t just a teacher, though; Jim Bridwell was a masterful climber with a visionary’s ability to pick out a seemingly impossible line and establish a route on it. Later, he himself turned into the mentor figure, as he taught the likes of John Long, Lynn Hill, and John Bachar how to rock climb. In this way, Bridwell has had a larger impact on the climbing scene than maybe anyone else, as he helped to usher in the golden age of the Stonemasters.

Honnold says he likes tall, long routes and that he tries to do them quickly. He is the author of the memoir Alone on the Wall and the subject of the 2018 biographical documentary Free Solo, which won a BAFTA and an Academy Award. Rumor has it that the Blue Grotto caves were featured in the movie Troy because of their beauty. But his effective planning isn’t to say he’s always been successful at avoiding them—Robert has been arrested a number of times in a number of countries. But for other free solo climbers, the rock face is not the climbing surface of choice.

His career-defining performance, however — and the one that earned him the #4 spot on this list — was in Hachioji. Now, Rishat has fewer accolades than just about every climber on this list , which does make him a bit of a dark horse. If you follow the competition climbing scene, though, this kid passes the eye test with flying colours. There’s no denying that he has a good shot at medalling in Hachioji, which automatically makes him one of the best in the world.

Pretty much everyone in the western world knows who Cristiano Ronaldo and LeBron James are, but if you ask someone whether they know who Alex Honnold is and (unless they’re a climber) it’s likely they won’t. Alain Robert free soloing in the Verdon, FranceIn 1982 he fell while rappelling because of a poorly tied knot and was in a coma for a week. He broke his nose, elbow, wrist, hip and heels, and suffered skull fractures. He made a near complete recovery and still to this day climbs and scales buildings without a rope. A couple of years later in 1987 he also free solo’d “Astroman” 5.11c / 6c+, another massively hard route that to this day has only been free solo’d by three people. Later in the year Croft would climb both “The Rostrum” and “Astroman” in one day without a rope.

John Long was one of the group of Yosemite climbers known as the “Stonemasters”. The legendary group was known for free climbing some of the famous big wall routes that had previously been done in aid style. John also popularized bouldering and high balling, and was one of the first Stonemasters to start free soloing and introducing it to others.