Catherine Destivelle is a French rock climber and mountaineer who is considered one of the greatest and most important female climbers in the history of the sport. She came to prominence in the mid-1980s for sport climbing by winning the first major female climbing competitions, and by being the first female to redpoint a 7c+/8a sport climbing route with Fleur de Rocaille in 1985, and an 8a+ (5.13c) route with Choucas in 1988. During this period, she was considered the strongest female sport climber in the world along with Lynn Hill, however, in 1990 she retired to focus on alpine climbing.
Catherine Destivelle climbing on the Adrachti tower in Greece
In the history of rock climbing, the three main sub-disciplines—bouldering, single-pitch climbing, and big wall climbing—can trace their origins to late 19th-century Europe. Bouldering started in Fontainebleau, and was advanced by Pierre Allain in the 1930s, and John Gill in the 1950s. Big wall climbing started in the Dolomites, and was spread across the Alps in the 1930s by climbers such as Emilio Comici and Riccardo Cassin, and in the 1950s by Walter Bonatti, before reaching Yosemite where it was led in the 1950s to 1970s by climbers such as Royal Robbins. Single-pitch climbing started pre-1900 in both the Lake District and in Saxony, and by the late-1970s had spread widely with climbers such as Ron Fawcett (Britain), Bernd Arnold (Germany), Patrick Berhault (France), Ron Kauk and John Bachar (USA).
The forest of Fontainebleau, the birthplace of bouldering at the turn of the 20th-century.
Falkenstein, in Saxon Switzerland where routes above grade 6a (5.10a) were first climbed in 1906.
Vajolet Towers, Dolomites; Torre Winkler, named after Georg Winkler, is the largest tower (centre); and was the start of early big wall climbing
Oliver Perry-Smith (right) freed the first 6a (5.10a) with Perrykante in 1906 in the Saxon Switzerland; a region where the world's first 6a/a+ (Südriss, 1910), 6a+ (Westkante, 1918), 6a+/b (Kuniskante, 1921), 6b (Rostkante, 1922), and 6b+ (Talseite, 1952) would also be freed.