Katie Brown (born 1981) [1] is an American female rock climber and early competition climber, who also made notable ascents in sport climbing, big wall climbing and bouldering. [2]
Katie Brown (born 1981) [1] is an American female rock climber and early competition climber, who also made notable ascents in sport climbing, big wall climbing and bouldering. [2]
She began sport climbing in Kentucky at the age of 13, and in 1995 at age 14 she won the X Games [3] and a climbing Junior World Championship in Laval. [4] In 1996 and 1997 she won both the Rock Master in Arco, Italy as well as the X Games. In 1999 she clinched a World Cup victory in France. [5]
In October 2008, she completed an onsight ascent of the northwest face of Yosemite National Park's Half Dome, and afterward, along with climber Lynn Hill, made the first female free ascent of Leaning Tower. [6]
Brown was selected as one of the 2009 "Hot 20 under 40" by 7x7SF Magazine , [7] and is the author of the book Girl on the Rocks: A Woman's Guide to Climbing with Strength, Grace, and Courage. Around the same time, she was featured in a Citibank ThankYou Card commercial along with Alex Honnold, climbing Fisher Towers near Moab, Utah. She also appeared in Rolling Stone and The New York Times . [5] She was once described by former world champion Lynn Hill as "the best female climber in the history of the sport." [5]
She left the sport behind and has lived in the Boulder, Colorado area. In 2007 she started a newspaper column about climbing for the Boulder Daily Camera and is currently working on a memoir. [5]
On October 11, 2022, she released the book Unraveled: A Climber’s Journey Through Darkness and Back detailing her struggles and the fallout of her time as a prodigy, [8] which won the 2023 Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature.
Carolynn Marie Hill is an American rock climber. Widely regarded as one of the leading competitive climbers, traditional climbers, sport climbers, and boulderers in the world during the late 1980s and early 1990s, she is famous for making the first free ascent of the difficult sheer rock face of The Nose on El Capitan in Yosemite Valley, and for repeating it the next year in less than 24 hours. She has been described as both one of the best female climbers in the world and one of the best climbers in the history of the sport. One of the first successful women in the sport, Hill shaped rock climbing for women and became a public spokesperson, helping it gain wider popularity and arguing for sex equality. Hill has publicized climbing by appearing on television shows and documentaries and writing an autobiography, Climbing Free: My Life in the Vertical World.
In mountaineering and climbing, a first ascent, is the first successful documented climb to the top of a mountain or the top of a particular climbing route. Early 20th-century mountaineers and climbers focused on reaching the tops of iconic mountains and climbing routes by whatever means possible, often using considerable amounts of aid climbing, and/or with large expedition style support teams that laid "siege" to the climb.
Yuji Hirayama is a Japanese rock climber specializing in lead climbing competitions. He won two Lead World Cups, in 1998 and in 2000. He is notable for being the first-ever climber to onsight an 8c (5.14b) route, and for his various speed records on El Capitan.
Josune Bereziartu, also known as Josune Bereciartu Urruzola, is a Basque rock climber. For a decade starting in the late 1990s, she was considered the strongest female sport climber in the world and is regarded as one of the most important female rock climbers in history.
Jerry Moffatt, is a British rock climber and climbing author who is widely considered as being the best British rock climber from the early-1980s to the early-1990s, and was arguably the best rock climber in the world in the mid-1980s, and an important climber in the history of the sport.
Lisa Rands is an American rock climber. She is known for her bouldering for which in 2002, she became the first American female to win IFSC World Cup bouldering competitions, and topped the IFSC world boulder rankings in 2002. Rands was the first American female to climb boulders of grade V11 (8A), and V12 (8A+), and was the second-ever female in history to climb a 7C+/8A boulder. As well as making first female ascents (FFAs) of boulders such as The Mandala V12 (8A+), Rands was the first female in history to do an E8-graded traditional climbing route, The End of the Affair.
Ramón Julián Puigblanque is a professional Spanish rock climber specializing in competition lead climbing and sport climbing. He won two World Championships, in 2007 and 2011, three European Championships, in 2004 2010 and 2015, and one Lead Climbing World Cup in 2010. From 2001 to 2016, he participated in 16 seasons of the World Cup, winning 21 World Cup stages. He has also redpointed several sport routes above 9a (5.14d), and made the first free ascent of La Rambla.
In the history of rock climbing, the three main sub-disciplines—bouldering, single-pitch climbing, and big wall climbing—can trace their origins to late 19th-century Europe. Bouldering started in Fontainebleau, and was advanced by Pierre Allain in the 1930s, and John Gill in the 1950s. Big wall climbing started in the Dolomites, and was spread across the Alps in the 1930s by climbers such as Emilio Comici and Riccardo Cassin, and in the 1950s by Walter Bonatti, before reaching Yosemite where it was led in the 1950s to 1970s by climbers such as Royal Robbins. Single-pitch climbing started pre-1900 in both the Lake District and in Saxony, and by the late-1970s had spread widely with climbers such as Ron Fawcett (Britain), Bernd Arnold (Germany), Patrick Berhault (France), Ron Kauk and John Bachar (USA).
Beth Rodden is an American rock climber known for her ascents of hard single-pitch traditional climbing routes. She was the youngest woman to climb 5.14a (8b+) and is one of the only women in the world to have redpointed a 5.14c (8c+) traditional climbing graded climb. Rodden and fellow climber Tommy Caldwell were partners from 2000 to 2010, during which time they completed the second free ascent of The Nose. In 2008, Rodden made the first ascent of Meltdown, one of the hardest traditional climbs in the world and the first time in history that a female climber matched the peak of the highest climbing grades.
Adam Ondra is a Czech professional rock climber, specializing in lead climbing, bouldering, and competition climbing. In 2013, Rock & Ice described Ondra as a prodigy and the leading climber of his generation. Ondra is the only male athlete to have won World Championship titles in both disciplines in the same year (2014) and is one of the two male athletes to have won the World Cup series in both disciplines.
Speed climbing is a climbing discipline in which speed is the ultimate goal. Speed climbing is done on rocks, walls and poles and is only recommended for highly skilled and experienced climbers.
Shauna Coxsey is an English professional rock climber. She is the most successful competition climber in the UK, having won the IFSC Bouldering World Cup Season in both 2016 and 2017. She retired from competition climbing after competing in the 2020 Olympics.
Mélissa Le Nevé is a French professional rock climber specializing in competition bouldering, but and also in outdoor sport climbing and bouldering.
Janja Garnbret is a Slovenian professional rock climber who specializes in sport climbing and competition climbing, and who has won multiple competition lead climbing and competition bouldering events. In 2021, she became the first-ever female Olympic gold medalist in climbing and is widely regarded as one of the greatest competition climbers of all time. She is also the world's first-ever female climber to onsight an 8c (5.14b) graded sport climbing route.
Margo Hayes is an American professional rock climber from Boulder, Colorado. In 2016, she won both the competition bouldering and the competition lead climbing events at the IFSC Climbing World Youth Championships in Guangzhou (China). In 2017, she became the first woman in history to climb a 9a+ (5.15a) graded route, and in 2019, became the first woman to complete the "9a+ Trilogy".
Jakob Schubert is an Austrian professional rock climber, specializing in competition climbing, sport climbing, and bouldering. He was four times World Champion and three times World Cup winner in lead climbing. In August 2021, he won bronze at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. As of the end of 2022, Schubert had won the most men's IFSC gold medals of any male competition climber in history. In addition to competition climbing, Schubert is the only climber in the world to have redpointed a 9c (5.15d) graded sport climbing route and climbed a 9A (V17) graded bouldering problem.
Robyn Erbesfield-Raboutou, is an American rock climber and rock climbing coach. In competition lead climbing, she is a 4-time World Cup champion, and won the biennial World Championships in 1995. She is the third-ever woman in history to redpoint a 5.14a (8b+) graded sport climbing route. She has coached several competition climbers, including Megan Mascarenas, Margo Hayes and her daughter, Brooke Raboutou.
Seo Chae-hyun, also known as Chaehyun Seo, is a South Korean professional rock climber who specializes in competition climbing. She won the overall 2019 World Cup title in competition lead climbing in her senior debut season. In August 2021 she represented South Korea at the 2020 Summer Olympics, where she was a finalist, and later that year won the IFSC World Championship in lead.
Laura Rogora is an Italian rock climber who specializes in sport climbing and in competition climbing. In 2021, she became the third-ever female climber in history to redpoint a 9b (5.15b)-graded sport climbing route, with her ascent of Erebor in Italy.