Traditional climbing

Traditional climbing (or trad climbing) is a type of free climbing in the sport of rock climbing in which the lead climber places temporary and removable protection while simultaneously ascending the route; when the lead climber has completed the route, the second climber (also called the belayer) then removes this protection as they ascend the route. Traditional climbing differs from sport climbing where the protection equipment is already pre-drilled into the rockface in the form of permanent bolts. Traditional climbing is still the dominant format on longer multi-pitch climbing routes, including alpine and big wall routes.

Traditional climbing carries a much higher level of risk than with bolted sport-climbing as the climber may not have placed the temporary protection equipment correctly while trying to ascend the route, or there may be few opportunities such as cracks and fissures to insert satisfactory protection (e.g. on very difficult routes). Traditional climbing was once the dominant form of free climbing but since the mid-1980s, sport climbing — and its related form of competition climbing — became more popular for single pitch routes, and all technical grade milestones from 8a+ (5.13c) onwards were set on single-pitch sport-climbing routes.

From the early 2000s, there was a resurgence in interest in single-pitch traditional climbing as climbers began greenpointing sport-climbing routes (e.g. such as Greenspit and The Path), and setting new grade milestones for traditional routes (e.g. such as Cobra Crack at 8c (5.14b) by Sonnie Trotter, and Rhapsody at 8c+ (5.14c) by Dave MacLeod). In 2008, female climber Beth Rodden created a new traditional climbing route at the same hardest grade ever climbed by a man with her ascent of Meltdown at 8c+ (5.14c). In 2019, Jacopo Larcher created what is considered the first 9a (5.14d) graded traditional route with Tribe.