Traditional climbing

Traditional climbing (or trad climbing) is a type of free climbing in rock climbing where the lead climber places their protection while simultaneously ascending the route; when the lead climber has completed the route, the second climber (or belayer) then removes this protection as they ascend the route.^[1] Traditional climbing differs from sport climbing where the protection equipment is already pre-drilled into the rock in the form of bolts. Traditional climbing is still the dominant format on longer multi-pitch routes, including alpine and big wall.^[2]

Traditional climbing carries a much higher level of risk than bolted sport climbing as the climber may not have placed the protection equipment correctly while ascending the route, or there may be few opportunities 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, and all grade milestones from 8a+ (5.13c) onwards were on single-pitch sport routes.

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