We spent the next day resting and practising with the porta ledges, a single for Ben and a double for Rich and myself. Pack 200 lbs. in two haul bags and a rucksack full of climbing kit, 5 days of water, 4 litres a day, 3 people - very heavy stuff!

Set off on the 30th of June up the fixed ropes left during our ascent of Freerider. Only 27 pitches to go! The heat during the day makes it very hard going. Rich has an epic battle on the 120-ft body sized offwidth, which leads to El Cap Spire. He's almost in tears when he falls off, so much effort but still no flash. The so-called hardest pitch at 5.13a is O.K cos. it's a short face climb, nice redpoint at 7 in the morning with no warm-up. Day 4, we get to below the Great Roof where Loz greets us to film the final stage of our adventure. We start the Freerider pitches; an outrageous traverse left leads to a whole new face and awesome view of the west side of El Cap. Fourth night first time we haven't finished in the dark but we still have another long day tomorrow. Ben has a heart stopping moment when he took a huge pendulum ride on the haul bag as he starts jumaring up the traverse - he wasn't a happy chap!

Last day - totally knacked can hardly move in our sleeping bags on this morning, stiff as boards. Hungry, dehydrated we have a bagel each for dinner and an apple to share with only 2 litres of water and 5 pitches to go, at least the haul bag is 120 lbs. lighter. I fall on another offwidth but a least I get up the 5.11a exit chimney.

At last top out after 5 days. Out of the 37 pitches we didn't manage 5 cleanly but did manage to not aid anything. It's the longest free route on El Cap and absolute flippin awesome - 3 stars almost ever pitch. It took us 3 weeks to recover, Rich hasn't climbed since returning and I'm off surfing - maybe we'll never climb again…

I was quite pleased to have achieved anything on El Cap after such a bad start though Rich was not happy as we failed on the initial objective and he was vary worried about the footage. Would there be enough material to tell the story and was it of sufficient quality for a terrestrial broadcast? Fortunately Rich heard from his producer after reviewing all the footage that the project was a go. Editing has already begun and it will take 10 weeks to cut the 80 hours of footage down to a 52-minute program that should be broadcast in the Autumn on Channel 4 but I'm not too sure.