Climber

Ben Cossey

Ben Cossey has been climbing for over 28 years and in this time has made first ascents and repeats of the hardest sport routes in the country.

Ben is not just a sport climber. He has also completed difficult boulder problems like The Wheel of Life (V15) and tackled classic English "death routes." This includes his first ascent of the direct start to John Dunne's iconic Parthian Shot (E9 6c) and the first-ever solo of Johnny Dawes' challenging 80s test piece Gaia (E8 6c).

Ben is finding the balance between work, family and climbing life – all while keeping some big goals in his sights.

While he loves hitting the open road to explore new places, oftentimes he is to be found bombing down the highway south to Mt Arapiles – his favourite place on earth. Here he loves listening to the magpies and smelling the golden wattle in the air. In 2024, he ticked an all-time life goal at Arapiles – The Sean Myles Project. A 32-year-old project, Ben dubbed it Light Weight Baby, giving it the grade of 34/ 5.14c/ 8c+ – a first at the crag.

His latest film project, Five Caves Five Days, however, explores the lesser-known climbing areas in Australia – putting Arapiles aside and exploring a number of caves between northern New South Wales and Queensland.

Ben grew up in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, where he is equally at home projecting new sport routes as he is developing new bouldering areas such as The Ukulore Valley – a relatively unknown but super high-quality bouldering area just outside of his hometown of Blackheath.

He is known around town for being an obsessive trainer and he hopes to put this training to use on some of his projects around Blackheath. This training will also put him in good stead to return to Germany’s Frankenjura to have another crack at the Wolfgang Gullich masterpiece Action Directe – a route that he got achingly close to sending in 2012.

Ben works as a physiotherapist, runs a little climbing coaching company – Garden Club Training, and can be found at the occasional open mic night playing pre-war acoustic blues.

Accomplishments

• First solo ascent of the classic gritstone test-piece Gaia (E8 6c), Derbyshire, England
• First ascent of the harder direct start to Parthian Shot (E9 6c) at night by head torch
• First Australian ascent of The Red Project (35), Diamond Falls, NSW, Australia
• Repeat of The Wheel Of Life (V15), The Grampians, VIC, Australia
• First ascent of Taipan Wall classic The Groove Train (33) in The Grampians, VIC, Australia
• First ascent of Light Weight Baby (34) at Mt Arapiles, VIC, Australia

Stay up-to-date with Ben on Instagram.