Watch Pete Whittaker’s One-Day El Cap Free Rope-Solo

At the end of 2016, U.K. crusher Pete Whittaker made the first-ever one-day all-free rope-solo of El Capitaon.

His selected route was Freerider 5.13a. We hear from Pete Whittaker, his long time climbing partner Tom Randall and big wall solo climbing expert Andy Kirkpatrick as they take us through the paces of what it really means to make a rope-solo-free ascent of El Cap.

“The Problem is if Pete pulled it off, nobody would even get it, nobody would understand how hard it was and to do it in a day, is totally insane,” said Andy Kirkpatrick.

“The ascent made by Pete on Freerider to me is hopefully the dawn of a new style of big wall solo climbing, big wall solo climbing on El Capitan for many years was just aid climbing.

“Now Pete has proven that it’s possible to do that free climbing, but relatively fast,” said Tom Randall.

In May 2007, Canadian Stephane Perron climbed Freerider in one week using the same techniques. In June 2017, Alex Honnold free-soloed Freerider in a few hours.