The 2025 Climbing Word of the Year: Morpho

I first heard the word morpho from the most successful competition climber in history. Back in July, I was deep in a tab-storm of studies on biological climbing advantages when I stumbled upon Magnus Midtbø’s YouTube video with Janja Garnbret.

Midtbø asked the 48-time (now 50-time) World Cup champion the question so many had been wondering: Did she think she could ever compete against men?

“I think in lead, I could do pretty well,” said Garnbret. She explained that she’d already tried some men’s World Cup routes on lead.

And bouldering?

She hesitated. “I think it can be morpho. But I think if everything is kind of set for me, I can also do pretty well there.”

At the time, I had no idea what “morpho” meant. But if it was powerful enough to make Janja Garnbret question herself, I figured, it was worth investigating.

It turns out that morpho, like most climbing slang, is not defined by any dictionary. Yet for many climbers, it’s common knowledge. By contrast, for crack climbers like me, it’s a fact of life too obvious to be delineated—and still extremely relevant to questions of credit and fairness.

In just two syllables, “morpho” embodies the crux of several decades’ worth of grade wars and routesetting backlash. It calls into question how our sport measures achievement, both on the collective and personal level. And even if you’ve never heard of morpho before, I promise that you think about it every time you climb.

What is morpho?

Etymologically, “morpho” is an adjective derived from the noun “morphology,” which comes from the Greek word “morphé” (mor-FAY), meaning “form.”

In climbing slang, “morpho” describes a climbing route that feels significantly harder or easier for certain body types. Think of it as a proportions-dependent route. On a morpho route, for example, a certain height, ape index, and body size are significantly more advantageous than others. It’s either a genetic leg up or a genetic sandbag. And it’s usually pretty annoying.

The start is too tall for you to reach? Blame morpho. The kneebar won’t work unless you’ve got short legs? Morpho. You can’t reach the holds without fancy footwork that effectively ups the V-grade by two numbers? Yup, that’s morpho.

In competitions, morpho is synonymous with unfair. “Women’s Qualifiers started the weekend in a promising fashion,” wrote our Hachioji World Cup correspondent in 2018, “except for a few well-founded complaints of morpho setting.”

But when you go outside, and leave behind the human-crafted routes, the context of “morpho” changes. Natural rock isn’t expected to yield a perfectly objective route for measuring one’s performance against their friends. It’s normal, in fact, to have natural advantages or disadvantages compared to your peers on certain climbs.

And sometimes, it’s the morpho routes that yield a bit of a miracle.

Morph-spiration

This year has been decorated with stories about climbers solving problems in new, specific ways for their bodies—who embrace the morpho routes all the way.

As Kate Kelleghan and Laura Pineau prepared to tackle the Yosemite Triple Crown in under 24 hours, they discovered that a Mount Watkins “splitter hands” pitch was actually a 4s crack. Unlike the men who’d cruised it before them, their hands were too small to fist the crack—which means they’d have to bring two 4s to aid it. Added weight is the nemesis for speed climbers, and their 4s came out to a full extra pound up the 2,200-foot mountain. Still, the team buckled down and made history in June with just 24 minutes to spare.

Last month, Mary Eden found Century Crack (5.14b) to be aggressively morpho during her first female ascent. With a 5 ‘0 height and -2 ape index, her arms were too short to reach between her legs and into the roof like the previous four ascensionists had. They had used the Wide Pony method, while she had to shuffle feet-first the entire way in a new style.

Today, Connor Herson says that Changing Corners, the crux pitch of the Nose (5.14a; 3,000ft), isn’t morpho at all. This year marked seven years after he sent the pitch on his free Nose ascent—and when he went back to repeat it for Triple Direct (5.14a; 3,000ft), he found himself recalibrating his genetic advantages. At 22 years old, he realized his old beta wouldn’t work and he’d have to resequence the entire crux. His younger self could get by with crossed feet and right hip scums; his taller self couldn’t fit in that box. So he relied more on using his longer reach—and in succeeding, became the third person in history to free the Nose in a day.

To climb a morpho route, you have to accept your genetic disadvantages, relax your ego, and commit to sending anyway, even if you’re giving more effort than the grade suggests.

The shift to style-based critique

Morpho routes can challenge the individual, but on a broader scale, their existence pokes cracks at the objective standards that we (especially in climbing media) often rely on. After all, if a route’s grade makes sense for some—but not all—climbers, how should we judge performance? If our number scales are flawed, how else do we accurately honor athleticism and courage?

The answer lies in the acceptance that every challenge, at its core, is somewhat morpho. Advantages and disadvantages are inherent to the sport; they cannot be eliminated, but they absolutely should be acknowledged and analyzed. In 2025, the climbing world leaned into this idea by asking serious questions of fairness and objectivity.

This year, in what I believe is a positive development, the community placed an increasing premium on style—on the deeper context behind a send or other event. El Cap junkie Jordan Cannon argued that a valid Salathé Wall (5.13b; 3500ft) free ascent shouldn’t skip the crux Pitch 19, interrogating style both figuratively and literally. Journalist Owen Clarke dug into the history of “first V15 flash” downgrades and why they happened. Our editors investigated ethical issues, such as why the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee made the evidence-poor decision to ban trans female climbers from competition and why alpinists on Jirishanca claimed a new summit well below the existing one. We also looked into literal style: climbing in socks, in skirts, and in the lightest gear possible. More than just asking what was climbed, we asked, how?

“Morpho” challenges are most visible when we watch climbers try the exact same moves in different ways, such as in World Cup finals or on world-famous outdoor boulders. As the word “morpho” trickles down from elite performers to the rest of the climbing world, I predict that the climbing world will continue to prioritize style over simple, grade-based achievements—with a few exceptions. The pressure of validating one’s performance will shift from number and letter grades to a candid description of ethics and intention.

And as the world slowly deprioritizes grades, everyday athletes who climb to give back to the city they were born in, find their identity again after cancer treatment, bring outdoor recreation to a postwar nation, or develop their sense of independence will take up more space in the spotlight.

Runner-up word of 2025: rage bait

Rage bait has certainly made itself known in 2025. It’s even earned a place as Oxford’s Word of the Year—and unfortunately, it’s not not showing up in climbing. (For proof, just look at the multiple climbing podcasts that discussed the rage bait tactics of Utah climber Lincoln Knowles.) Spend too much time online, and it can seem that everyone in the world wants to make you angry—and to misrepresent what should be taken gravely, like the consequences of falling unroped.

But here’s why rage bait isn’t the Word of the Year (at least here at Climbing): It’s more a symptom of not climbing than climbing too much. The reason that rage bait has so successfully inhabited online spaces is exactly the reason it evaporates when you simply—I’m truly sorry for this—touch rocks, even if they’re plastic.

At its core, rage bait is a digital performance. By contrast, when you’re climbing, you can’t shield yourself from reality: You need to know exactly how far you are from the ground, what piece (or system) is keeping you alive, and whether your belayer is someone you can trust. The vulnerabilities are inescapable. More importantly, there’s no social reward for pretending not to care.

While it’s easy to get caught up in irritating Internet drama, all you have to do is head out to the gym or crag and climb to realize that rage bait exists in an entirely different realm from your love for the sport and the people you rope up with. Rage bait can’t hurt you from its perch on the digital fringes. Trust me: It’s okay to leave it there.

The post The 2025 Climbing Word of the Year: Morpho appeared first on Climbing.