It is partly the realization that given enough time this technique would allow to climb anything which lead to the "new style" of placing pro called "free". This happened mainly in the Canadian rockies in the late 80's, although this style had already been advocated in other regions of America in the early 80's. The level of climbing has always been extremely high there, compared to other parts of the world, and in the last edition of "Waterfall Ice", Joe Josephson writes that nowadays, using the "aid style" is no longer considered to be an option there.

The ease of placement of the Chouinard screw made "free" look more attractive to a vast number of people. It is at that time (in the early 90's), that the free style was adopted in the alpine countries. Climbers who had been refining the "old style" for years where first reluctant, because they had to start over at one full grade below their old standard. However, climbing free had soon its payoffs. The technique, and the vision of the climbs improved very fast, and the 90's saw a significant number of grade 6+ and grade 7 climbs, as well as the completion of long and sustained grade 6 routes which had formed and had been spotted for 10 years, but appeared too intimidating then.