Connor Herson

Connor Herson, born in 2003, is an American rock climber known for traditional climbing and big wall free climbing. In 2025 he made the first free ascent of Drifters Escape on the Stawamus Chief in Squamish, proposing a grade of 5.15a that would make it the first traditional climb in history at that difficulty. He has redpointed some of the hardest traditional routes in the world, including Cobra Crack, Meltdown, Magic Line and Bon Voyage, and onsighted Prayer for a Friend and Greenspit at 5.14a. On El Capitan in Yosemite he free climbed The Nose at age fifteen in 2018, repeated it in a day in 2025 in about nine and a half hours, and made the first free ascent of Triple Direct. He comes from a climbing family and has received the American Alpine Club Robert Hicks Bates Award and a Golden Piton Award from Climbing magazine.