UKC

Fantastic achievement and apologies if this has mentioned before, but the article and the original story it links to refers to him being the youngest person to “free” the Old Man. I’m assuming it hasn’t been aid-climbed by a 7 year old.

Is there a reason why the article doesn’t just refer to him being the youngest person to climb the Old Man. Freeing also suggests to me that he led the route, which quite understandably he didn’t.

I think - from recollection - there was an instance of a younger lad being dragged (quite literally) up by his father.

 > Is there a reason why the article doesn’t just refer to him being the youngest person to climb the Old Man. Freeing also suggests to me that he led the route, which quite understandably he didn’t.

I think free climbing whilst seconding is a perfectly acceptable category and is to be congratulated in this specific example. 

Is this not another example of the insidious creep of an American term into the British climbing language. We already hear 'off-belay'  'stem' and 'free-solo' and heaven's know what else. Soon we shall accept the American dictionary for all our spelling if MS, Google, Apple  et al have their way!

Out of curiosity what did we used to shout when we took someone off belay before ‘off-belay’?

’yer off’ - and we still do.