The Paarl Rock itself is these days a popular Mecca for rock climbers. However, in the pioneering period of rock climbing in South Africa, the mountain was ignored or shunned because its steep faces were so smooth and unfissured that climbers could find no place to attach "runners" or anchor points for belays. The first climbing routes up the rock were pioneered in 1969 by J. W. Marchant and G. Athiros, the former from the University of Cape Town Mountain and Ski Club. Soon afterwards Marchant and John Knight established a few routes on which the rope was run out for or more with no protection whatsoever. This was in the days before bolting was possible, and these achievements are still held in high regard today. Nowadays protection is afforded by bolts in the granite, and there are on Paarl Rock a few dozen spectacular, beautiful and very difficult routes that attract the best climbers of the current generation. (All of these climbs remain dangerous for the inexperienced.) A guidebook for these routes was written in 2006 by Stewart & Scott Noy, who lived at the foot of the mountain and were developing many of the new routes at the time.