When I first started getting into the sport, I was confused about the difference between free climbing and free soloing. I wrote the following guide to help people understand the distinction!
So, what’s the difference between free climbing and free soloing? Free soloing means to climb with no rope to catch you if you fall. Free climbing means you wear a rope to catch you, but you don’t use any artificial means to help you ascend the wall.
Anyone who’s heard of Alex Honnold has heard of free soloing — the terrifying art of rock climbing without any protection (ropes, slings, bolts) to catch you if you fall. A lot of people, however, mistake this with free climbing, when there’s actually a large distinction between the two. Free climbing simply means rock climbing where you don’t use any aid (like pulling on your rope) to help you ascend the route. Free climbing is just what most of us would consider normal climbing. You still wear a rope to catch you if you fall.
Free Climbing vs Free Soloing
As I said, free climbing is actually just what most of us would consider normal rock climbing. If you’ve ever gone to a climbing gym, or ever bouldered before, you’ve likely free climbed. In the video above, all of the athletes are free climbing.
Free climbing is the art of getting up a steep wall without using any artificial ‘aid’ to help you up. This means that you can only climb with your fingers and toes, and you can only touch the rock — no pulling on bolts or placing rope ladders.
The opposite of free climbing is aid climbing — climbing where you place pieces of gear in the rock and then pull on them to help you move through difficult sections. Aid climbing is a different art form in its own, and it remains popular today in areas like Yosemite (but we’ll talk about that later).
So, despite the similarities in their name, free climbing and free soloing are hugely different sports. Free climbing is, without a doubt, the most common form of rock climbing, while free soloing is the least.
Free soloing, for those who don’t already know, is rock climbing without any protection — no ropes to catch you if you fall. In case you haven’t seen it, check out this insane video of Alex Honnold, the greatest free soloist ever, on the Enduro Corner of El Capitan:
Free soloing is a dark, mysterious corner of the climbing world where few people hang out. I spend a lot of my time with fellow climbers, and I’ve yet to cross paths with a free soloist (although I have heard of a few).
For most people, this version of the sport is simply too dangerous for them to engage in. With that being said, though, both it and free climbing have an interesting history, and we’re going to look at that next.
Free Climbing: The (Sort of) New Frontier
When rock climbing was first practiced, more than seventy years ago, nobody free climbed. It was all aid climbing, where athletes would slot pieces of metal into cracks in the wall, attach a rope to them, and then climb up the rope.
People did this for a few reasons:
- Equipment wasn’t as good in those days, making free climbing both too difficult (imagine having to climb in tennis shoes)
- Protection wasn’t as good, making free climbing dangerous
- There was a different mentality about the sport — it was more about exploring massive stone faces than climbing specific routes.
During this era, climbing was much more about exploration and taking risks than it was about the physical challenge. Climbers would venture onto massive cliff faces, dangling their life from pieces of metal wedged into the rock, trying to see who could force their way up the blankest, most horrendous-looking pieces of rock out there.
Some of the most iconic and impressive ascents of all time were completed on aid, like Warren Harding’s ascent of both the Nose and the Dawn Wall. To this day, aid climbing remains a popular sport, and most mountaineers are familiar with it.
Rock climbing, however, has taken on a bit of a different shape now.
Eventually, the sport began to gain more popularity, and better athletes began rock climbing. Once they did, they discovered a bit of an inconvenient truth: with enough bolts and ladders, you could basically scale anything.
This took some of the fun out of the sport, and so climbers began to look for new ways to challenge themselves. To do so, they ditched the complex system of rope ladders, nuts, and hooks, and instead challenged themselves in a completely new way: what could they get up using just the strength of their own body?
This is when free climbing was born; famous climbers like Wolfgang Güllich, John Bachar, and Lynn Hill began to push the boundaries of this new discipline higher and higher.
Free climbing appealed to these young athletes because of the sheer physical challenge that it presented. While aid climbing is more like solving a puzzle — finding the best places to put your gear and the easiest way to move up a cliff — free climbing is all about the difficulty of the individual routes.
To free climb, you need really good core strength, delicate footwork, and super strong forearms. Most of your weight will be suspended from your fingertips as you go. There’s also a slew of techniques that you’ll need to learn: heel hooks, drop knees, deadpoints, crimping, mantling, campusing… the list goes on and on.
Nowadays, if you hear of a famous climber, the odds are that they’re a free climber. Some of the most notable free climbs in the past couple of decades have included:
- Lynn Hill, The Nose: Potentially the greatest climber of all time, Lynn Hill, was the first person to ever free climb the most iconic route in the world with The Nose. A year later she came back and did it in a day, just to prove that she could.
- Chris Sharma, Biographie: the first consensus 5.15a in the world, this route helped to launch Sharma onto the international climbing scene.
- Chris Sharma, Jumbo Love: Eight years later, Sharma’s reign of dominance continued with the first -ever 5.15b climb, Jumbo Love.
- Adam Ondra, La Dura Dura: The title of best climber in the world officially passed to Adam Ondra in 2013 when he sent La Dura Dura, the world’s first 5.15c.
- Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson, Dawn Wall: After seven years of projecting the route, Tommy and Kevin finally completed (what I believe is) the most impressive free climb ever: 32 pitches of steep, brutally difficult climbing up the Dawn Wall of El Capitan.
- Margo Hayes, La Rambla: 19-year-old Margo Hayes became the first woman to send a 5.15 route with her ascent of the iconic and uber-burly La Rambla.
- Adam Ondra, Silence: Adam Ondra continued to push the boundaries of the sport with his ascent of Silence, which he assigned the mind-boggling grade of 5.15d
Free Soloing: Literally, Why
I know I’ve said it before, but I feel the need to restate it here: despite the similarities in their names, free soloing and free climbing are not the same. In fact, they’re so far apart from each other that they’re almost different sports.
When you’re free climbing, the point (for most people) is to see how far you can push the limits. You want to put your body to the test and find out just how well you can perform on super hard routes.
If you try that free soloing, you’re likely to wind up dead. Free soloing is much more about the perfection of the sport, the beauty of the moves, and the purity that comes with having zero room for error.
The group of people who free solo is small, and I can’t recommend that anyone try it out because of how incredibly dangerous it is. Free climbing, on the other hand, I endorse whole-heartedly — it’s an incredible sport and a great way to get a workout in, and I think everyone should give it a try.