I'm replying to your repliers in total, not you. 001sky clearly understands what 'free climbing' means. What is being questioned is whether we should lump such

I'm replying to your repliers in total, not you. 001sky clearly understands what 'free climbing' means. What is being questioned is whether we should lump such different things under the same term. Yes, of course everyone here understands that free is referring to the lack of aid in making vertical progress. But base stations, hauling food up, all that stuff, is just a different thing from a ground up, self sufficient effort. Why not look for a better term for that? When the Huber brothers do an ascent in a couple of hours we don't just call it "free" or "aid" (depending on whether they pulled on gear or not); we distinguish it by calling it a 'speed ascent'. Likewise, in the big mountains we characterize climbs as being 'siege', 'alpine style', and so on. None of that is meant to put down the climbers. We still have climbs that require siege tactics, and that is fine. Why not look to be not just accurate, but also precise in our language? Anyway, I agree with 001sky. If someone said they freed a route, I would not envision a base camp along the wall, even if it is accurate in that they used no aid. It's different, not better or worse, than what, say Lynn Hill did when she freed the Nose. A different term is perhaps warranted.