“Big Wall” climbing was born in the alpine rock faces especially in the Dolomites in the 30’s with the great Italian pioneers such as Emilio Comici and Ricardo Cassin.
In the 60’s and 70’s, aid climbing has resolved “the last major problems of the Alps” with ascents in the longest limestone rock faces in the Dolomites, the Vercors or the Verdon.  The great names in alpinism are the actors: René Desmaison, Walter Bonatti, Georges Livanos, Yannick Seigneur, etc…This is the époque of the great direct routes.
In parallel, on the North American continent, Yvon Chouinard, Warren Harding, Royal Robbins or Tom Frost were discovering the incredible granite rock faces of the Yosemite in California.
So daring, beautiful masterpieces were born such as the “Nose”, “Salathe”or the « North American wall », to mention only the most well known.
In the 70’s and 80’s the most beautiful aid routes evolved during the Californian hippy movement under the influence of the master climber Jim Bardwell and the evolution of technical equipment: « Sea of Dream », « Senate Mandate », « Aurora », « Pacific wall » or « South Sea ». These routes remain modern benchmarks of this activity.
With the explosion of free climbing in the beginning of the 80’s, aid climbing was somewhat forgotten in Europe.  But since the beginning of the 90’s, there has been a real renewal of this method and the Verdun Gorges have come back into fashion with a great number of fantastic routes in the “Parboil Rouge” or the “Castapiagne».
Over twenty years the Yosemite Valley has become the world mecca of this climbing technique.
It can be seen today that the great game of 2000 has become that of climbing the major routes as quickly as possible and especially to free climb the “Big walls” (see section on the site).The games in these great vertical ascents seem infinite!