Aid climbing is generally misunderstood and derided by most modern climbers. It's often seen as just cheating up routes that you aren't strong enough to free. This is not far from the truth with respect to the few most popular routes on El Cap, but as soon as you stray a little further from the beaten path you enter another world entirely.

These routes are not free climbable and require skills far outside the normal trad toolbox to get up them, relying more on creative problem solving rather than finger strength. They take you to such wild and adventurous places with huge amounts of exposure, insane steepness, and minimal features that not even the hardest free routes in the world could hope to match.

It is truly a special feeling to be in the middle of such a pitch, fearful of a huge fall if a marginal piece were to fail, but also able to hang for hours and admire the view whilst you wait for the fear to abate. To experience all that alone makes it completely unforgettable. I recently spent 2 months in Yosemite Valley chasing that feeling.

For those who don't know much about aid climbing here's some context:

The grading system is a closed scale from 0 to 5 that purely rates the danger. A0 is a bolt ladder, so it's impossible to fall, whilst A5 is defined by certain death if you blow it. The grades between are ill-defined, but A3 normally means a big fall and A4 should have the potential for significant injury.

The extra aid gear on top of a normal trad rack more or less boils down to three things:

Heads are basically homemade nuts bashed into shallow, flaring pods in which conventional nuts wouldn't stick. They aren't cleaned afterwards so are normally fixed and rarely trustworthy.

Hooks are better known by UK climbers as pieces of protection, but in the US they're mainly used just for progression.

Beaks are the only pegs that really get used nowadays, but hard routes can require as many as 50 of them.

I arrived in the Valley absolutely shattered after 40 hours of travelling with 80kg of bags. Over the winter I'd been thinking about Spring objectives, the difficulty of which gradually inflated as I became less scared of what I had previously planned. So, less than 24 hours after arriving in the Valley I was walking up to the base of a route as hard as anything I'd done before, Zenyatta Mondatta (A4).

The last 6 months of sitting behind the front desk of a climbing gym hadn't really prepared me for the physicality of an El Cap solo. Thankfully I find the mental side is far more important. The first couple of pitches had some challenging and quite frightening sections of hooks and heads between spaced solid gear.

Since I was soloing, I had to abseil then jumar the pitches after leading them to clean the gear. After this I was wrecked. Thankfully it was forecast to snow the next day, and I could have a rest waiting it out. I was surprised to see a team starting up Zodiac despite the forecast. I later talked to them, and it turned out they didn't have a fly and woke up with 2 inches of snow on their ledge.

A couple days later I committed to the wall and spent the next 7 climbing a route just 16 pitches long as I tried to get back into shape for wall climbing. The climbing was thought provoking on almost every pitch and featured a lot of loose rock and long sections just on hooks. Often, you'd be aiming for a rivet at the end of a long hooking section, but this was no respite. Bridwell purposely drilled them shallowly to keep the pitches sustained.

The loose rock also made things interesting. In 2017 half of the fifth pitch fell off, and the new pitch involved a long protectionless free traverse on loose flakes, which was difficult with a full aid rack on. The snowmelt also meant that Horsetail Falls was running, which was as beautiful as the occasional sprinkling of water was annoying.

After a week of hard work, I disgraced myself by aiding a 5.7 hand crack on a 45-degree slab, which my German friend told me was "like killing your grandmother". Despite that, I was very pleased to have finished, and happily spent the next few days shuttling gear down from the top straight back to the base of my next route (I didn't have a car or a campsite to store stuff).

During that time I met Paul, and we made the third ascent of Atlantis (A4) together over the next 9 days, which I spoke about in an interview with UKC, available here.

After Atlantis I'd planned to do a route with my friend Ryan. He could only start either 2 or 9 days after I had finished. I didn't know how I'd pass the time for 9 days so went for the 2. Our objective was to do Tempest (A4) and be down in 6 days, which I thought was ambitious, but it was Ryan who had to be down by then.

I had been briefed by Paul to make sure to lead the second pitch of Tempest, since it was apparently the best on the route. I came up with a plan of telling Ryan I was tired from the walk up and ask him to do the first pitch so I could rest. I'd then make a miraculous recovery and take the second. I couldn't do it and confessed my plan to him, to which he laughed and said I could have it anyway.

A few hours later I was apologising and saying he could have whatever pitch he wanted for the rest of the route from halfway up (or rather across) the phenomenal pitch. It was 3D thrutching up an overhanging groove at one moment, then swinging onto a slab amidst the steep the next. It reminded me a lot of Gogarth, and I thought it had the potential to be an incredible free pitch (if you climb 5.14 go have a look). We abseiled to the ground from the top of the Alcove, making sure to tell the people up there for the fixed rope swing that our ropes were not for swinging.

Ryan and I had very similar climbing systems and were happy short fixing (we'd both soloed El Cap in a day), so after a slow first day where we only climbed 3 pitches, we climbed 5 a day every day to the top. 5 pitches may not sound like a lot, but most of the pitches were 50m+ and required a lot of beaks.

The short fixing, although quick, was brutal for the follower. On the second day, just as I finished cleaning the 'Pecking Order' pitch and hauled and docked our bags, I heard Ryan shout down that he was ready to tag up the hauler. He had finished rope soloing the next pitch. I then had no rest before cleaning that pitch and swinging straight through to lead the next two pitches in a row.

I did get a brief rest as Ryan led one of the harder pitches, the 'Pillar of the Community' but then had to remove a multitude of beaks, which was exhausting work. I slumped straight from my jumars into the ledge and needed a while to work up the energy to stand up. The next day we swung leads.

I got to lead the crux Badass Gerberding pitch, which I had cleaned when we did Atlantis. The pitch was straightforward except for three reachy moves on delicate gear between rivets. We'd agreed beforehand that if we asked the other to 'watch me' this translated to asking the belayer to start holding the brake rope, which Ryan did as I stretched from a #0 copperhead to a physics defying hook (the ones in the photos above).

Neither blew, and Ryan went back to standard bigwall belaying. The rest of the pitches were a nice level of being not straightforward but never massively challenging, and after 4 days on the wall we topped out. By now it was halfway through my trip and I had delayed my main objective twice, though was feeling very wall fit. There was nothing to do except solo the Reticent Wall.

I had been obsessed with the Reticent since chatting to Steve Gerberding, one of the first ascensionists, last year. It was first climbed in 1995 and featured the only pitch Gerberding ever graded A5 - 'The Natural'.

It's the 175-foot 13th pitch of the Reticent, climbing off a ledge and finishing just below the top of the Dawn Wall. On the FA Steve was praying that the natural features would run out so he could drill a bolt, but they never did, and he led what for many years was the hardest pitch on El Cap. I couldn't wait to give it a go.

I wanted to have a good rest before starting, but each morning as I saw dawn's first light illuminate The Natural from the meadow, I was filled with such a desire to climb the route that I couldn't wait. The morning I started fixing, I woke in the woods to see a bear wandering past. It hadn't seen me, and when I jumped up and shouted it scarpered. This made me feel very powerful, and I took it as a good omen for the route.

The Reticent starts after the first 7 easy pitches of New Dawn, 3 of which I managed to fix on my first morning on the wall. On the way down I swung across a blank slab to see the Alfa Romeo badge Leo Houlding had bolted to the wall to use as a handhold. I'm not sure that would fly at Stanage. The second day was physically brutal as I jugged and hauled my bags up to my highpoint and climbed 4 more pitches to Lay Lady Ledge, from which the Reticent begins.

The next two days were filled with some of the most technical aid climbing I'd ever done. The pitches didn't have big grades but featured some intricate gear that genuinely only just held your bodyweight.

On the second pitch off Lay Lady, just as I placed a skyhook, the previous hook ripped the edge off and I fell onto my lanyard clipped to the next. Luckily it held, otherwise only 4 heads separated me from a 20m factor 2 fall onto my belay. I was worried by the quality of these pitches that the route wouldn't live up to the idea of the Reticent that I had built up in my head over so much time thinking about it. Then I got to Wino Tower and the route really started.

'Master's Corner' sprouts off Wino Tower, which you could become planted in if you fell in the wrong place. It's almost 70m long and rated A4+ in the guidebook. Most say this is now the crux pitch. I had joked with my friends about which of them could have my rack if I fluffed this pitch.

Having seen boulderers and sport climbers livestream their attempts on routes, I also jested that I would livestream the Reticent crux. As I hung off the only rivet halfway up the pitch, I thought it would be funny to start a stream. My mum joined and wasn't happy with all the talk of hitting the ledge and dying. The whole pitch was a lot easier than I had expected, with enough good gear to make it relatively safe. I found the challenge was to not relax in case it did ever get properly hard.

The next day I climbed up the Irie, a massive corner of beautiful grey rock, via two pitches predominantly on beaks, then ran up a third pitch to New Dawn Ledge. As I cracked open the first of more than a few beers on the ledge, some free climbers arrived on their way up from working Passage to Freedom. Fuelled by booze and psych from the pitches that day, I proceeded to unleash colossal amounts of spray about how death defying my route was and how I was the real climber. I later realised one of them was a very well-known free climber that I hadn't recognised.

The next morning I woke in the golden sunlight below The Natural. I clipped my rope to my bags to soften any fall and set off. The start was A1 and led to some good cams, lulling me into a false sense of security. Then the sickle trends left via some heads that pulled out in my hands and poor beaks. From the last good beak I pulled over a bulge on a few heads and hooks before reaching the flake. I'd become desensitised to wobbly flakes over the last week on the route, so I began bashing a beak in the base of it. I started to relax as the beak sank in millimetre by millimetre, ringing as it went.

Suddenly it sank an inch and the flake creaked. I pulled on it and a chunk came off in my hands. Whilst I'd have liked to take it back home, there was no way of getting it down intact. It took so long to hit the ground that I'd given up watching and kept climbing before it did.

I continued up the same flake a little more gingerly until I reached the safety of some good heads and then a fixed peg. From there the pitch was safe, though has some long puzzling sections on hooks until I reached the belay. I don't think it's dangerous enough to be A4 anymore, but it's a miracle of nature and by far the best pitch I've done.

What comes next after the Reticent? Although tired, I had loved being up there so much that I was immediately itching to get back on. So, 4 days after topping out I started fixing pitches on the only hard route as classic.

Sea of Dreams has an amazing history, made even more special by Dave Diegelman's photos from the first ascent (look them up!). The route is probably best summed up by the picture of Dale Bard as he finishes cleaning a pitch and his expression when he sees he'd been jugging on 5 RURPs tied together in series (and a bolt around the corner), aptly named 'The RURP belay'. The route is littered with similarly named pitches and belays that give the route a lot of character. I initially thought of doing it with a partner, but people were put off by the loose rock and after looking at the topo I didn't want to share any of the pitches.

The first few days had some good pitches with some fun pendulums but the route really kicked in from the Continental Shelf. This is a long wide sloping ledge that you leave and traverse above for 100ft. Halfway across there's a rivet to pendulum off but after that there's only a nest of three poor heads to the belay. The rest of the placements are hooks. If a hook blows, you'll swing into the shelf and be lucky to only need a rescue. More likely you'll end up as a statistic in a book, hence the name of the pitch - "Hook or Book".

It's probably one of the most infamous aid pitches in the world. I puzzled my way across and found that one of the heads had fallen out under its own weight. I was pleased to see that the other two held that one, but I don't think they'd hold much more. I didn't use them to progress, but rather just clipped a screamer to them and prayed. The hook placements were all a lot less positive and less obvious than I expected in such a serious situation, and I was still a little scared of the rock breaking after my near miss on the Reticent.

One pitch later I was at another piece of history - the Expanding Anchor. Often natural belays are bolted for convenience by subsequent ascensionists, but Bridwell forbade bolts here. It's made from cams in two flakes which do subtly expand if you really bounce them. They're the best gear for a couple hundred feet up or down though, so it's all relative. By now I had got into the diorite of the North America feature, which is known for being loose. Despite that, for me the diorite pitches were the best on the route with not one of them being anything less than extraordinary.

As I climbed the Bull Dyke I weighted a hook on a flake below the dyke. From there I reached up to clip a fixed head, but as I moved up my hand stayed in place. I realized that the flake was slowly peeling off the wall, so I lunged up for the head, only making the flake fall faster. I fell onto a good cam I'd just placed after a long stretch of hooks and old heads, but the flake followed.

As I stopped so did the flake as it had somehow got caught in my lanyards. I reeled it back up with some difficulty and sent it out as far from the wall as possible. Moments later it was a million pieces scattering down from the continental shelf. Rather it than me, had it chopped my rope.

The pitch above to the 'Space Station' was the most exposed on the route, from which you can see the whole overhanging Jenga tower of diorite sweeping away below, the Sea being one of the few safe passages through the choss. From there the diorite ends but the route remains at a sustained level of difficulty until you join the North America Wall just below the top. All in all it took me 7 days to climb the route, the same as the Reticent.

After finishing the Sea I was spent, though I had a week left before my flight home. Before my trip I toyed with the idea of trying to solo another route in a day but until then I never had time for it. Now it was the only thing I had time for. The amount of 5.9 I had aided on Lurking Fear last year made me think that I could push my limit more on aid routes with less free climbing. I decided to try to solo Virginia (A3) in a day, which I don't think has been done before.

I walked up to the base, making sure to avoid the rattlesnakes, and meticulously sorted out all my gear. By 14:30 I was ready to go. I enjoy the adventure of climbing, and setting off to try to do something that hasn't been done before with a significant chance of failure, no one to help you if that happens, and no option to bail certainly felt adventurous.

I linked the first 4 pitches into 2, and probably started off a little too quickly to be sustainable. Unlike Lurking Fear, Virginia overhangs the whole way, so cleaning the pitches is also energy sapping. Since it was so steep I decided to bring a haul line and haul my day bag, which also allowed me to rap back down it and not have to pass every piece of gear on the lead line. It did also mean that I had to flake 140m of rope after every pitch.

Pitches 5 to 7 had some actual thin aid climbing and a moderate stretch of hooking off a belay. I was still feeling fresh, so managed to get through these before it got dark. I'd been climbing for less than 5 hours and was 7 pitches off the ground, with just 10 easier Tangerine Trip pitches to go. This was going to be easy! Then it got dark and my arms started cramping.

I'd like to think I slowed down since I knew I had time in hand, but that's easy to say now. In reality I'd gone too fast at the start and was feeling it. I battled up a pitch I had led before and cracked out the coffee I'd decanted into a Nalgene under the table at the Lodge.

The next pitch had some traversing free climbing that I aided. I cleaned the spaced traversing protection by pulling onto some jugs, removing the gear, and then falling half onto my jumars and half onto the slab below. The overall force was strong enough to break neither the rope nor my ankles and saved a few seconds. I was becoming really drained by the top of the next awkward pitch but had some long quick rivet ladders to look forward to on the next couple. These were nice, but had some tricky sections around them that sunk more time.

I ate a cinnamon roll and started the pitch I was least looking forward to due to its biscuit rock. In a dazed state, I placed a cam several sizes too small behind a flake and got on it without testing it. This resulted in a daisy fall, which was very effective at waking me back up. I finished the next mainly rivety pitch just under 17 hours after I had started, as the sun hit the top of the Dawn Wall.

From there I only had 3 pitches to go. I'd soloed them before and had 7 hours to do it. I charged up these familiar pitches, which really made me understand how much quicker it is if you aren't climbing a pitch for the first time. Despite being absolutely knackered for the last 12 hours, I managed to top out in just under 19 which I was happy with, given I hadn't done 11 of the 17 pitches before.

I spent my last couple of days in the Valley sitting in the meadow, looking up at the wall I had spent 37 days out of the last two months toiling on, wishing I could spend two months more. Despite having done some routes I'd wanted to do for years, I left feeling unfulfilled. As the superficial pride of the 'tick' quickly fades, I'm called back to the Valley by what matters most to me - the experience on the wall.