Bouldering History

Written by Super Member: bradkillough


In France, the first documented attempts at Bouldering may have started in the 1870's. In 1874, Ernest Cezanne created the Club Alpin Francais in Paris. During Hiking trips to Fontainebleau, its members discovered the magic of these sandstone boulders. As they fell under the allure of the forest, they realized that Bouldering would be an excellent way to prepare for future alpine expeditions.

In 1935, a man named Pierre Allain invented the soft soled Climbing Shoe for serious Rock Climbing, which looked a lot like the footwear nowadays but it lacked sticky rubber, which wasn't developed until the 1970's in Spain. Allain wore his shoes that same year, for the first time in the mountains on an ascent of the north face of DRU. Another climber named Pierre Chevalier introduced nylon Climbing Rope about 1943. Fountainebleau Bouldering never caught the attention of most climbers until the beginning of the 1970's. In the early 1980's, the turning point of Bouldering as we know it began to take place and quickly adopted an athlete's logic of climbing. In 1947, Fred Bernik designed the first formal Bouldering circuits at Fountainebleau. These protocols became an end, giving rise to speed and difficulty competitions. Today, a famous boulder problem that most of us know about is in camp 4 Yosemite called Midnight lightning. It was first done by Ron Kauk in 1978. Kauk and Bachar worked on the problem for two months, getting to the lip. Finally, Kauk got to the lip and rocked over to finish the problem, as the others fell silent!

John Gill is considered as the father of Bouldering. He was probably the first person to boulder in the south, bouldering on Stone Moutain in Georgia in 1954, only a year after he had started climbing. In the 1960's, he went Bouldering at Shades Mountain in Alabama and Desoto State Park. He later tried Bouldering in other areas like southern Illinois, western Kentucky, and Missouri. While attending college at Georgia Tech., he tried gymnastics. He got the idea of the use of chalk in climbing from the rings he did as gymnastics.

Based on the accounts in the History of Bouldering, the sport has come a long way. Try Bouldering and experience what it has to offer.

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