[mauvehaus]

FYI: Free climbing is the opposite of aid climbing. I.e you progress upwards only by weighting the rock as opposed to making progress by weighting your gear.

Climbing without a partner is soloing. Technically there's aid soloing, which is sort of a weird discipline wherein you're aid climbing without a partner protected by a rope, which is why the kind of climbing Alex Honnold is famous for is called free soloing.

Confusingly, there's also rope soloing, which is free climbing with a rope for protection. He did a bunch of rope soloing to practice the pitches he did free solo in the movie of the same name.

[sph]

Yeah, I was thinking of Honnold, so I meant free soloing is preferable to caving.