IT took British mountaineer and adventurer Leo Houlding almost a decade to achieve his sacred dream: free climb a whole new route up El Capitan in Yosemite National Park in California.

On his fifth and final try, he and fellow Briton Jason Pickles struggled for six days to climb 600 meters to the top of the vertical granite monolith on October 28 last year. It's one of the world's great Big Wall climbs.

Houlding, 31, is famous in China for the first ascent of the challenging 600-meter west face of the sacred mountain of Huashan in Shaanxi Province in July 2009.

Shanghai Daily caught up with him recently in a telephone interview to learn about his latest exploits.

El Capitan is notoriously dangerous. There are dozens of named routes up the rock face, all long and difficult. Houlding and Pickles marked a new route they named "The Prophet," after the book of the same name by Kahlil Gibran, It's one of Houlding's favorites.

The Houlding-Pickles route is believed to be the first British path up El Capitan. The 13-pitch route climbs the right side of the cliff, sharing several pitches with other routes, including Bad to the Bone, Eagle's Way and the Secret Passage.

"This is definitely the highlight of my career. El Capitan is one of the greatest cliffs in the world, a sacred dream stop for almost every climber," Houlding said in a telephone interview with Shanghai Daily from his home in the UK.

"Now Jason Pickles' and my name will be part of it forever. It has been a long time in the making but I finally made it."

His next project is more climbing, this time in Mali in West Africa.

Success on El Capitan took all their courage and determination.

Houlding and Pickles first made a one-day, exploratory climb in 2001, with no aids and no fixed rope. They tried again from the ground in 2004 and 2009 but retreated because of storms and injuries. Last June, they made a perfect beginning with no falls but failed to complete the last two pitches in broiling 30 degree Centigrade heat. They made their final, successful attempt in October when it was cooler.

Climbing at its elegant best, with all the right moves and style, is like "ballet on a cliff," said Houlding. And El Capitan is one of the world's great cliffs, sometimes called the Great North American Wall.

This time, the duo practiced their routine with fixed ropes for four weeks, taking into account all the physical challenges and demanding pitches they could imagine.

"The route is about 600 meters high, much higher than the World Financial Center, the No. 1 skyscraper in Shanghai," recalled Houlding. The rocks are loose, which makes it difficult to get good hand and footholds - "this makes it more scary and dangerous."

He's a self-confessed adrenalin addict who says he "likes feeling the fear," likes overcoming it, calming down, focusing and carrying on. "Then I feel a hell of a lot of satisfaction," he said.

The mountain and weather were unpredictable. On the fourth day of the climb, a tremendous storm broke, the worst in Houlding's memory, and they were trapped in a hanging tent for two days on the cliff. "The rain kept pouring down and we were trapped in a flooded portaledge, totally soaked and cold. We were the only people on the cliff, there was no help and we couldn't back out," Houlding recalled. "We were scared and kind of hopeless, feeling like a little ship in the boundless ocean."

Just as it seemed impossible for them to move on, the storm cleared and the sun came out.

They packed their gear and went up the final two pitches - one of which was a 35-meter desperately thin crack called A1 Beauty, the toughest part Houlding had ever encountered.

"Physically it is very, very demanding and you could get hurt if you fell in the wrong place. It is probably the hardest 150-foot (45.72-meter) section of climbing I have ever done," Houlding said.

"The good holds are like the end of a matchbox and the bad holds are like two half matchsticks next to each other. I was really hanging on by my finger nails."

He fell six or seven times and his fingers bled from squeezing into narrow cracks to get a hold. The climbers were out of food, water and energy, performing at their physical limits.

"At that moment, I was standing on the edge of failure. If I failed again this time, we would have to fly back to the UK and return next May. I wasn't thinking about anything, neither desperate nor hopeless. I had nothing left and nothing to lose," Houlding said.

He and Pickles drew on their last reserves of will and made it to the top, receiving wild cheers from other climbers on El Capitan meadow who watched their fantastic ascent.

"Standing on the top, I was excited and exhausted, feeling like a gladiator after a fierce battle. The view was dreamingly beautiful, like those you can see in the movies," the mountain climber said.

In fact, Houlding was a no stranger to El Capitan. When he as 18 and a self-described "hot head." Houlding and a fellow climber, Patch Hammond, had completed the "El Nino" route in September 1998. This was the beginning of Houlding's mountaineering career - previously he had wanted to be a firefighter.

Climbing prodigy

After watching German climbers Alex and Thomas Huber free climb the "El Nino" route, Houlding and Hammond spontaneously decided to have a try. Without any planning or rehearsal, they became the first Britons to climb this route without any falls.

The UK media was astounded by their feet and crowned young Houlding a "climbing prodigy," likened to legendary mountaineer Sir Chris Bonington.

Born in 1980 in the mountainous Lake District, Houlding started climbing at an early age. When he was 10, he tied himself to a rope after seeing his father climbing with friends.

"Everyone has a natural ability to climb," he said, adding that children naturally play climbing games until their mothers tell them that climbing is dangerous and they can hurt themselves. "Thus, we acquire this fear of heights," he said.

He was obsessed. In 1995, Houlding climbed "Lord of the Files" on Dinas Cromlech in North Wales - he reached the summit at 2am in total darkness after his head torch failed halfway up.

After turning pro, he continued pushing the limits of himself and the sport. He pioneered a style called para-alpinism, in which climbers go up a route and then jump from the top. He has climbed some of the toughest and most demanding routes in the world.

In 2007, he reached the summit of Mt Everest with American climber Conrad Anker. In 2009, he conquered the west face of Mt Huashan and climbed the northwest face of Mt Asgard on Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic.

In 2005 he undertook an epic race with BBC's Top Gear's host Jeremy Clarkson up the Verdon Gorge in France, called Europe's Grand Canyon. Clarkson drove up and down in an Audi RS4 while Houlding and his partner climbed vertically up and jumped down from the top. Houlding won.

"Climbing isn't actually about getting to the top. It is more about adventure and setting a bar as high as possible and then trying to achieve it," Houlding said. In climbing one discovers new personal strengths one didn't know existed.

Houlding also tries various climbing styles and does extreme sports, such as skydiving, surfing, skiing and snowboarding. But free climbing is and always will be his favorite.

"Some people may think I'm crazy. You can climb much safer if you want to. But honestly I won't go for it - I'm a fan of adventure. If everything is planned and secured, where do surprise and excitement come from?"

Injury is part of extreme sport. Houlding suffered his worst injury in 2002 when he crushed the talus bone in his right ankle in a 20-foot (6.1-meter) fall while ascending Cerro Torre on the border between Argentina and Chile. Without medical assistance, he and his partner had to crawl down on their hands and knees for 56 hours, without food, water or rest - it had only taken them 20 hours to climb up. This was recorded by hovering film makers on video and released a documentary, one of several, including his ascent of Everest, Asgard and El Capitan.

It took Houlding six months to recover and rehabilitate the joint.

"I made a bad decision and paid the price, I pushed too hard," he said. "I wouldn't make the same decision again, I learned my lesson."

Filming a climb adds a new dimension, though he himself doesn't carry a camera.

"Modern technology gives me opportunities to keep the best memories of the mountain and share the excitement with more people," he said.

The secret of his success? "Follow your heart and don't hurt yourself."