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 01In June 2017 Alex Honnold became the first person to free solo a full route on El Capitan. Which route?
Freerider
He climbed the 2,900-foot 5.13a route in 3 hours and 56 minutes with no rope.
Q 02What did Free Solo, the 2018 film about Honnold's climb, win at the 91st Academy Awards?
Best Documentary Feature
Free Solo was directed by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, who worried the cameras were adding pressure.
Q 03Free soloing means climbing rock without ropes or protection. What may the soloist use?
Shoes and chalk
Ice climbers get the same deal with tools and crampons.
Q 04Roughly how tall is El Capitan's tallest face from base to summit?
About 3,000 feet
The granite is about 100 million years old and unusually free of joints, which is why glaciers left it so sheer.
Q 05How long did the first ascent of the Nose on El Capitan take Warren Harding's team in 1958?
47 days
They used siege tactics with fixed ropes over more than a year; the last push in November took a week.
Q 06Who made the first free ascent of the Nose in 1993, famously declaring 'It goes, boys!'?
Lynn Hill
She came back a year later and freed 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
Adam Ondra repeated it in eight days the following year, leading every pitch himself.
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
Doctors reattached it, but he had the useless finger removed so it would not get in the way.
Q 09In 2000 Caldwell and three other climbers were held hostage by militants in which country?
Kyrgyzstan
The ordeal is covered in the 2017 film The Dawn Wall.
Q 10Adam Ondra's route Silence, the first climb graded 9c (5.15d), is in a cave in which country?
Norway
The Hanshelleren Cave at Flatanger; the route remained unrepeated as of 2026.
Q 11In which year did Ondra make the first ascent of Silence?
2017
He had bolted it in 2012-13 while working on Change, the world's first 9b+, in the same cave.
Q 12In 2001 Chris Sharma made the first redpoint of a consensus 9a+ (5.15a) route. What is it called?
Realization/Biographie
He followed it with the first consensus 9b, Jumbo Love, in 2008.
Q 13Wolfgang Güllich's 1991 route Action Directe was the world's first at which grade?
9a (5.14d)
He also introduced the campus board and doubled for Sylvester Stallone in Cliffhanger.
Q 21The forest around which French town is famous as the birthplace of bouldering?
Fontainebleau
Parisian alpinists trained on its sandstone from around 1900, and its climbers are called Bleausards.
Q 22In sport climbing, what does the lead climber clip the rope into for protection?
Pre-drilled bolts, via quickdraws
It began in early-1980s France, where climbers wanted to climb blank faces with no cracks for gear.
Q 23In traditional climbing, spring-loaded camming devices are commonly nicknamed what?
Friends
Their arrival in the 1970s dramatically raised the grades trad climbers could safely attempt on cracks.
Q 14Güllich worked as a climbing double for which actor in the 1993 film Cliffhanger?
Sylvester Stallone
Ron Kauk doubled alongside him; Güllich died in a car crash the year before the film came out.
Q 15The Yosemite Decimal System was devised in the 1950s by members of which organisation?
The Sierra Club
Class 1 was a hike and class 5 technical roped climbing; letters a-d were added from 5.10 upward.
Q 16In the Yosemite Decimal System, at which grade do the letters a, b, c and d start being added?
5.10
The letters happened to match the American movie rating codes of the time.
Q 17What was the hardest grade on the Yosemite Decimal System scale as of 2025?
5.15d
It is an open-ended scale, so the number climbs whenever someone climbs harder; 5.15d (9c) was first reached by Adam Ondra's Silence in 2017.
Q 18The V-system used to grade boulder problems is also known by what name?
The Hueco scale
It originated at Hueco Tanks in Texas; Europe mostly uses the Fontainebleau system.
Q 19Nalle Hukkataival climbed Burden of Dreams, the first V17 boulder problem, in which country?
Finland
He spent four years projecting the 4-metre red granite block at Lappnor.
Q 20In bouldering, what are 'crash pads'?
Foam mats laid on the ground for falls
They opened up areas that would once have been too dangerous to climb ropeless.
Q 24Climbing chalk is powdered what?
Magnesium carbonate
Gymnasts and weightlifters use the same drying agent; liquid chalk is a popular variant.
Q 25The Grigri, one of the most popular assisted-braking belay devices, is made by which company?
Petzl
A camming mechanism pinches the rope on a sudden load; the tubular ATC stands for 'air traffic controller'.
Q 26The tubular belay device known as the ATC takes its name from what?
Air traffic controller
Figure-eight devices, by contrast, are often banned in gyms because they twist the rope.
Q 27Modern climbing shoes are known for a tight fit, sticky rubber soles and what shape?
An asymmetrical downturn
The rubber compounds were developed specifically for climbing and vary in stickiness and durability.
Q 28Competition climbing made its Olympic debut at which Games?
Tokyo 2020
Held in 2021 because of the pandemic, it controversially rolled lead, speed and bouldering into one medal.
Q 29How many disciplines were combined into the single Olympic climbing event in Tokyo?
Three
Lead, speed and bouldering; Shauna Coxsey noted no boulderer had ever transitioned to speed.
Q 30For Paris 2024, how was the Olympic climbing format changed?
Speed became a separate event from boulder-and-lead
That doubled the medal events from two to four.