Redpoint (climbing)

For other uses, see Red Point (disambiguation).
Kurt Albert climbing at the "Streitberger Schild" near Streitberg, Frankenjura, Germany, where the first Rotpunkt was made in 1975.[1]
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In rock climbing, a redpoint is the free-climb of a route by lead climbing where the climber never used the rope, or any other artificial aids such as their climbing protection, to hold any of their weight during the climb (i.e. if they fall, they must never weight the rope). The climber is allowed to have practiced the route many times beforehand — such as by headpointing or by top roping — and/or to have failed on numerous previous attempts.[2]

Climbers will try to redpoint a route after having failed to onsight the route, which means to free-climb a route on the first attempt with no falls and no prior beta, or to flash the route, which means to free-climb the route on the first attempt with no falls but with prior beta.[3] The first successful redpoint of a climbing route, in the absence of any prior onsight or flash, is recorded as the first free ascent (FFA) of that route.[4]

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