

T o avoid rating systems confusion, I shall use the American Decimal System (5.0 - 5.15?) to describe the difficulty of both boulder problems and longer climbs. It will be assumed the rating of a move or sequence of moves are the same if they are 10 feet off the ground or 1,000 feet. I will also use Sherman's V-rating when appropriate. Widely-spread historical benchmarks are easier to compare with the use of only one or two systems.









I would like to thank Kerwin Klein of UC-Berkeley and Colin Wells for information about the history of European bouldering, John Sherman for historical information from his excellent book Stone Crusade , Bob & Bonnie Kamps, Ted Cais , Curt Shannon , and Simon Panton for photos, Michael Fain , John Stannard, Pat Ament , Phil Gleason , and Ted Cais for contributed articles, Randy Burks for assistance in translation, Karsten Kurz for assistance regarding Saxony climbing,

Jiří Tlamsa for an article on rope climbing in the Czech Republic, Predrag Miletic for comments about chinning, Sylvain Jouty for historical information.