Rock Climbing Trivia
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50 free Rock Climbing trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
40 free Rock climbing trivia questions with answers. Rock climbing has a rich history of firsts, and this quiz covers the ones every climber argues about at the crag. Forty questions take in the 1958 siege of the Nose, Lynn Hill's 'It goes, boys!', Alex Honnold's ropeless Freerider, Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson's 19 days on the Dawn Wall, Adam Ondra's Silence and the first V17 boulder problem in Finland. There are questions on grading systems from the Yosemite Decimal System to the Font scale, the origins of sport climbing, trad gear and cams, why climbers use chalk, the Grigri, Wolfgang Güllich's campus board, the world's first climbing wall, and how climbing finally reached the Olympics in Tokyo and split into two events for Paris. Easy questions ask what a crash pad is for; hard ones want the cave in Norway and the year the first artificial wall went up in Leeds. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the routes, climbers and disciplines, and each question carries the sentence that supports it.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which El Capitan route did Alex Honnold free solo, the first ropeless ascent of the wall?
Freerider
Freerider: Honnold soloed the 5.13a line on El Capitan's southwest face, a free variation of the Salathé Wall, with cameras rolling for the documentary Free Solo.
Q 02What did Free Solo, the 2018 film about Honnold's climb, win at the 91st Academy Awards?
Best Documentary Feature
Best Documentary Feature: directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin collected the Oscar in February 2019, the film having also won the BAFTA for Best Documentary.
Q 03What equipment may a free soloist use when climbing without ropes or protection?
Shoes and chalk
Shoes and chalk: a free soloist climbs with nothing but rock shoes and a chalk bag; any rope, harness, bolts or pads would make it a different discipline.
Q 04Roughly how tall is El Capitan's tallest face from base to summit?
About 3,000 feet
About 3,000 feet: El Capitan rises roughly 900 metres from the Yosemite Valley floor, a sheer granite monolith left standing by glaciers because its rock has few joints.
Q 05How long did the first ascent of the Nose on El Capitan take Warren Harding's team in 1958?
47 days
47 days of climbing spread over 18 months, using fixed ropes in siege style; Warren Harding, Wayne Merry and George Whitmore topped out on 12 November 1958 after a final 12-day push.
Q 06Who made the first free ascent of the Nose in 1993, famously declaring 'It goes, boys!'?
Lynn Hill
Lynn Hill freed the Nose with Brooke Sandahl over four days in 1993, then returned in 1994 to free it in under 24 hours.
Q 07How many days did Caldwell and Jorgeson's first free climb of the Dawn Wall take in 2015?
19
19 days: Caldwell and Jorgeson lived on the wall from late December until topping out on 14 January 2015, freeing all 32 pitches of the route.
Q 08Tommy Caldwell climbs some of the world's hardest rock despite losing most of which body part to a table saw?
His left index finger
His left index finger: a table-saw accident in 2001 severed it; surgeons reattached it, but Caldwell had the stiff, useless finger amputated to climb better.
Q 09In 2000 Caldwell and three other climbers were held hostage by militants in which country?
Kyrgyzstan
Kyrgyzstan: Caldwell, Beth Rodden, Jason Singer Smith and John Dickey were seized in the Kara-Su valley by Islamic militants and escaped after six days.
Q 10Adam Ondra's route Silence, the first climb graded 9c (5.15d), is in a cave in which country?
Norway
Norway: Silence climbs the roof of the Hanshelleren cave at Flatanger, on the country's west coast; Ondra spent years on the project before his redpoint.
Q 11In which year did Ondra make the first ascent of Silence?
2017
2017: Ondra redpointed Silence on 3 September 2017 after bolting the line years earlier while establishing Change, the world's first 9b+, in the same cave.
Q 12Which route did Chris Sharma redpoint in 2001 as the world's first consensus 9a+?
Realization/Biographie
Realization/Biographie: Sharma's July 2001 redpoint at Céüse in the French Alps, after months of effort, was the first route widely accepted as 9a+ (5.15a).
Q 13Wolfgang Güllich's 1991 route Action Directe was the world's first at which grade?
9a (5.14d)
9a (5.14d): Action Directe in the Frankenjura, with its brutal one-finger pockets, was the first route given 9a; Güllich trained for it on the campus board he invented.
Q 21The forest around which French town is famous as the birthplace of bouldering?
Fontainebleau
Fontainebleau: Parisian alpinists began training on the forest's sandstone boulders around 1900, and its devotees are known as Bleausards.
Q 22In sport climbing, what does the lead climber clip the rope into for protection?
Pre-drilled bolts, via quickdraws
Pre-drilled bolts, via quickdraws: sport routes are equipped with permanent bolts, so the leader clips a quickdraw to each hanger; the style grew up in 1980s France on blank limestone.
Q 23In traditional climbing, spring-loaded camming devices are commonly nicknamed what?
Friends
Q 14Güllich worked as a climbing double for which actor in the 1993 film Cliffhanger?
Sylvester Stallone
Sylvester Stallone: Güllich performed the climbing for Stallone's character Gabe Walker; he died in a car crash in August 1992, the year before the film's release.
Q 15The Yosemite Decimal System was devised in the 1950s by members of which organisation?
The Sierra Club
The Sierra Club: members of its Southern California rock climbing section worked out the system at Tahquitz Peak, extending the older Sierra Club class 1-5 scale.
Q 16In the Yosemite Decimal System, at which grade do the letters a, b, c and d start being added?
5.10
5.10: once climbs harder than 5.9 appeared in the 1960s, the scale was extended to 5.10, 5.11 and beyond, each subdivided a to d.
Q 17What do the R and X suffixes on a Yosemite Decimal System grade warn of?
Poor protection and dangerous falls
Poor protection and dangerous falls: borrowed from film ratings, R marks a runout route where a fall could cause injury and X one where a fall could be fatal.
Q 18The V-system used to grade boulder problems is also known by what name?
The Hueco scale
The Hueco scale: John 'Vermin' Sherman devised the V-grades while bouldering at Hueco Tanks in the early 1990s, the V standing for his nickname.
Q 19Nalle Hukkataival climbed Burden of Dreams, the first V17 boulder problem, in which country?
Finland
Finland: the granite block at Lappnor, east of Helsinki, took Hukkataival four years of effort before he sent it in October 2016.
Q 20In bouldering, what are 'crash pads'?
Foam mats laid on the ground for falls
Foam mats laid on the ground for falls: crash pads, which spread from the 1990s, let boulderers attempt high problems that were once too dangerous without a rope.
Friends: Ray Jardine's spring-loaded cams, sold from 1978 under that name, fit parallel cracks that nuts could not, raising the grades trad climbers could safely attempt.
Q 24Climbing chalk is powdered what?
Magnesium carbonate
Magnesium carbonate: the white powder absorbs sweat from the fingertips for a drier grip; liquid chalk suspends the same compound in alcohol that evaporates on the hands.
Q 25The Grigri, one of the most popular assisted-braking belay devices, is made by which company?
Petzl
Petzl: the French company introduced the Grigri in 1991; a cam inside pinches the rope under a sudden load, assisting the belayer's brake hand.
Q 26The tubular belay device known as the ATC takes its name from what?
Air traffic controller
Air traffic controller: Black Diamond gave its tubular belay device the ATC name as a joke about controlling a climber's descent; it has no moving parts.
Q 27Modern climbing shoes are known for a tight fit, sticky rubber soles and what shape?
An asymmetrical downturn
An asymmetrical downturn: performance shoes curve the toes downward and inward toward the big toe, concentrating power on small footholds, especially on overhangs.
Q 28Competition climbing made its Olympic debut at which Games?
Tokyo 2020
Tokyo 2020: sport climbing debuted at the pandemic-delayed Games in August 2021 at the Aomi Urban Sports Park, with Spain's Alberto Ginés López taking the first men's gold.
Q 29How many disciplines were combined into the single Olympic climbing event in Tokyo?
Three
Three: lead, speed and bouldering were rolled into one combined event, with each climber's three placings multiplied together to produce the final ranking.
Q 30For Paris 2024, how was the Olympic climbing format changed?
Speed became a separate event from boulder-and-lead
Speed became a separate event from boulder-and-lead: Paris 2024 awarded four climbing golds instead of the previous Games' two, with speed decided by head-to-head races on a standardised wall.