Wide Boyz Pete Whittaker recommends

Drawn to climbing by the challenge and adventure, Pete Whittaker seeks out pioneering first ascents and revels in pushing his personal limits. Having grown up in the Peak District surrounded by the area’s world-famous gritstone crags, he has been climbing since the age of six and has gone on to rack up an impressive mix of climbing achievements on a variety of rock types and styles across the globe.

As one half of the Wide Boyz duo with Tom Randall, Pete has become synonymous with hard crack climbing. He has taken techniques learnt on his local crags and has applied them with great effect all over the world, most notably on the huge roof cracks in the desert areas of Utah, and on the big walls of Yosemite. In 2016 he became the first person to make a solo-free ascent of El Capitan in under 24 hours. He followed this up in 2018 with a single-day solo link-up of both El Capitan and Half Dome.

More recently, in 2021, Pete and Tom free-climbed the Great Rift (5.13), a 2,500 foot roof crack on the underside of a highway overpass in Devon, England.

Pete's books, Crack Climbing, is packed full of tips, trick and general tomfoolery to get you scaling cracks in no time.