Climbing is a varied sport, and I know lots of people wonder who the best is. I’ve compiled this list to break down the top ten climbers in the world.
Adam Ondra is currently the best climber in the world. Ondra’s ascent of Silence, the only 5.15d in the world, marks him above the rest of the field.
He’s been there for a while, but there’s still no one alive who can challenge Adam Ondra’s dominance. His sheer volume of hard climbs is far more impressive than anyone else currently on the scene, and when you add in his broad resume – with climbs like Belly Full of Bad Berries and the Dawn Wall demonstrating how good he is at all areas of the sport – no one can challenge his throne. In the rest of this article, I break down the top ten list of the best climbers in the world.
Number 10: Alberto Gines Lopez
Coming in at number 10 in 2022 is climbing’s defending gold medallist, Alberto Ginges Lopez. In a surprise upset, Gines Lopez beat out some of the best climbers of all time to win gold at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.
Now, depending on your view of the Olympics, this is either going to seem way too high or way too low for the Spanish youngster. On one hand, he’s the defending gold medallist and an incredibly strong lead climber. On the other, he’s never actually won a world cup in the IFSC, and his outdoor resume isn’t that great.
All of that is true, but I think Gines Lopez is correctly placed here. He had a lifetime performance at the Olympics, and the fact of the matter is that he’s a super strong lead climber and a really skilled all-around competitor. He doesn’t have the rap sheet to start breaking into the top 5, but Gines Lopez should be on everyone’s radar heading into 2022.
Number 9: James Pearson
At number nine, we have James Pearson. A child phenom who had to go into hiding for a few years to escape the British gritstone scene, James Pearson is back and crushing some of the scariest routes in the world. He ticked Harder Faster, an incredibly difficult E9, right at the end of 2020, and he finished off 2021 with an ascent of Tribe, which many say could be the hardest trad route in the world. Pearson didn’t grade it, but it’s rumoured to go somewhere around 14d or maybe even 5.15x.
Now, it’s hard to imagine a climber being more different from Gines Lopez. Whereas Gines Lopez is a competition climber, Pearson has built up an incredible resume of difficult, scary climbs on British gritstone. He may not be the strongest climber in the world, but his ability to move calmly though hard sequences while tens of feet above his last piece of protection earns him a spot on the list.
Number 8: Will Bosi
Will Bosi had a breakthrough year in 2021. He’s been flirting with the upper echelon of climbers of a while, with a couple of nice competition appearances, but this past year is when he really started to find his footing. His biggest moment of the year was when he completed the first ascent of King Capella, which he graded 5.15c, making him only the sixth person to ever climb that route.
King Capella has since been downgraded by Jakob Schubert, but Bosi remains a super interesting prospect in both the outdoor and indoor worlds. He has multiple hard boulders and a few 5.15b climbs to his name.
He’s also shown some promise on the competition scene and, while his resume might not quite be there yet, I’m really excited to see what Bosi does with some more experience under his belt. He’s still only 22, which is crazy, and I expect we’ll be seeing his name a lot in the upcoming years.
Number 7: Nalle Hukkitaival.
If you want to talk about all-time greats, Nalle Hukkitaival has to be on everyone’s radar. A renowned boulderer who put up the world’s first V17, Nalle is a veteran of the climbing world who’s still going strong.
Nalle had a pretty quiet 2021, but he still has an argument to be made as the best boulderer, and one of the best rock climbers, in the entire world. With that being said, a quiet year by Nalle’s standards still means he ticked multiple 8a and above boulders.
Looking back a few years, Nalle’s resume becomes even more impressive. On a per-move basis, burden of dreams is still probably the single hardest route in the world, and it stands today as one of only two V17’s. Nalle’s also dabbled in big wall climbing, as he spent a significant amount of time in Yosemite working on the Dawn Wall. It’s hard to imagine a route less similar to Burden of Dreams, and although as far as I can tell they got turned away due to weather, this is a super cool project that I would love to see Nalle return to one day.
Number 6: Sebastien Bouin
One of the most underrated climbers in the world, Sebastien Bouin has continued to quietly build his resume of hard sport climbs.
Bouin bust onto the scene in 2019, putting up the second most hard ascents we’ve ever seen after Adam Ondra. He hasn’t pushed the ante quite as much in recent years, but he remains one of the world’s best pure sport climbers, and he’s working on big things.
His hardest ascent ever goes at 9B/+, which he did back in 2019. He’s yet to break into the 9B+ range, but his resume still speaks for itself: 50 grades in the 9a range or higher, with some really impressive ascents like Move and La Rage D’Adam.
Fuerterhmore, it looks like Bouin has some exciting projects on the go. He’s been spending a lot of time in Ceuse on Bibliography, working it with Sean Bailey, and says the route feels doable. More excitingly, though, he has a local route called the DNA project, which he says feels as if it’s in the range of 9c. Now, that might be a tad ambitious, but I really want to see what Bouin can do if he puts his head down and focuses on a single route for a long perior of time.
Number 5: Tomoa Narasaki
Now, how highly you value Tomoa on this list is probably going to be dependent on how much weight you put on indoor bouldering, but the fact remains that Narasaki is one of the best climbers in the world. His indoor achievements absolutely speak for themselves, with 24 World Cup medals to his name.
Additionally, he’s also started to build up a pretty impressive resume, with some nice v14 ascents – including a v14 flash, which very few people have ever done – and a v15 that I think only took him three tries to do.
Tomoa has fallen a few places, though, because 2021 was an off year for him. The Olympics didn’t go as planned, the competitions earlier in the season didn’t go as planned, and even his performance in Moscow was slightly underwhelming. I still think Tomoa is one of the most unique climbers we’ve ever seen, and at 25 he probably hasn’t even hit his peak yet, so expect to see him back in the mix for the top three before long.
Number 4: Sean Bailey
Sean Bailey had probably the best 2021 of any climber out there. He claimed gold in lead at both the Villars and Chamonix World Cups, and gold in boulder at Salt Lake City, which was about as well as the comp season could have gone considering he didn’t qualify for the Olympics.
More importantly, though, he became the third person to climb Bibliographie, putting him on the short list of climbers who have ever sent 15c. This was a massive jump from Bailey’s existing red point max of 15a, and it shows how much of a breakout year Bailey had in 2021.
In a field of up-and-comers, Bailey has shown as much promise as anyone else. He’s strong, well-rounded, and composed under pressure, and his ascent of Bibliographie showed that he’s not just a competition climber.
Bailey has demonstrated that he can hang with the best at every type of climbing, and at 25, he’s just about ready to start peaking. The future looks bright for Sean Bailey.
Number 3: Daniel Woods
Given how good he’s been for so long, it’s absolutely insane to think that Daniel Woods would still be in the top five climbers alive in 2022, but here we are. If you want to talk bouldering resume, he arguably has the most impressive of anyone on the planet today, and maybe ever.
He has one V17, six V16’s, and twenty-seven V15 ascents to his name. That’s an insanely long rap sheet of hard boulders, and Woods is still at the forefront of bouldering.
At age 32, it seemed like he was done with the limelight – and then he came out with return of the sleepwalker, v17, and suddenly he was back in contention as one of the best climbers on the planet. Woods doesn’t compete, or do a whole of sport – although he’s pretty good when he decides to do that – but he remains maybe the best boulderer ever and, if Sleepwalker is anything to go off of, he’s somehow still getting better.
Number 2: Alex Megos, Stefano Ghisolfi, and Jakob Schubert
The second-place spot on this list is a three-way tie between Alex Megos, Jakob Schubert, and Stefano Ghisolfi. Now, I know this looks like a cop out, and that’s because that’s exactly what it is, but here me out. I tried for weeks to figure out a way to rank these three against each other, and I just can’t do it.
On one hand, you have Jakob Schubert, who won the Olympic bronze, and then finished up the year by sending both King Capella and la Capella, both 9b, in a day. He also repeated Chris Sharma’s Es Pontas and Alasha, both of them graded at least 5.15. He’s a terror in the lead world, downgrading everything, and I’d love to see him turn his attention towards move outdoor routes now that the olympics are out of the way.
Then there’s Stefano Ghisolfi, who repeated Bibliographie and now has the best 9b+ resume of anyone not named Adam Ondra. Stefano has really rounded out in the last few years with some hard lead ascents in a variety of styles, and he has a couple of projects that look like they’ll be pushing the 9b+ or 9c range.
Finally, you have Alex Megos. Alex had a disappointing Olympics, but he’s still the only one of these three to claim a first ascent of a 9b+ route, and both of them have been clear in pointing out how much harder a first ascent is. Sure, his route Bibliographie got downgraded by Ghisolfi, but he was super gracious about it and ended the year with an ascent of King Capella, a stiff 9b, which only took him a few days to do.
I mean, looking at their resumes, how do you even rank these guys against each other? Jakob probably had the best year, Ghisolfi arguably has the best resume, but based on the eye test, I would probably pick Megos on any given day to be the best climber out of them? I genuinely have no idea how to put one of these above the other, so I’m taking the easy way out and they all tie for second place. On any given day, any of these climbers could be the second best climber in the world.
Number One: Adam Ondra
There’s really no debate here. Adam Ondra is far and away the best climber in the world, and it’s not even close.
Adam Ondra is so good that it’s absurd. He’s so good that, even in a year where he didn’t really push any boundaries, he’s still the only climber on this list who I feel confident about.
His resume speaks for itself. First, there’s his competition achievements, where he’s won thirty-five world cup medals, twenty-one of which are gold. He does it in both the lead and bouldering categories, too.
Then, there’s his outdoor resume. He was the first person to ever climb 5.15c and 5.15d, the latter of which no one else has been able to achieve. He has the most hard sport climbs of anyone in history and the sixth most hard boulders.
Additionally, while most climbers are specialists, Ondra is good in all other areas. He climbed Belly Full of Bad Berries, a brutal 5.13 off-width, in only two attempts. He climbed the Dawn Wall, which took Tommy Caldwell seven years, in a little more than three weeks. He has an unprecedented level of dominance over the sport, one that I’m not sure we’ll ever see again, and he is the best climber on the planet today.