Underlying Data

The data of this blog is taken from the popular rock climbing news website and database
8a.nu.

8a.nu allows climbers and boulderer to save their ascents and scores them according to the type (e.g. onsight, flash or redpoint) and the grade (based on French grades).

The data from the website has been published by David Cohen via Kaggle.

The data is still in the raw format which includes for example projects or toprope ascents which are usually not considered as 'proper' ascents. Furthermore, the database includes climbers who state unrealistic low or high heights or birth years. We have cleaned this dataset and focus only on

• onsight, flash or redpoint ascents,
• without repeats,
• exclude ascents without a score by the respective climber 
• and routes graded between 6a and 9c+. 

We have excluded a few top ascents by unknown individuals (e.g. a 9b+ ascent by user Paolo Antoniotti). 

This leaves us with ca 2.7 million ascents which cover the time period up to 2017.