Lee Cossey

Climber

Lee has been climbing for the last 15 years. Initially learning the ropes from his uncle at Mount Arapiles he soon dug his teeth into the vast opportunities for sport and traditional climbing around his home in the Blue Mountains. For the last 9 years Lee has been at the forefront of hard climbing in Australia, he is as comfortable 10m out from the last piece of thin protection on a Mount Buffalo first free ascent as he is with a rack of quickdraws on his harness climbing the countries hardest sport routes.

Some of his most memorable ascents include;

First ascent of Sneaky Old Fox 34, Diamond Falls, Australia's hardest route.
First continuous free ascent of Lord Gumtree, Mount Buffalo, Australia's hardest big-wall free route.
In 2007 Lee made ground-up free ascents of the 1000m long El Capitan, Yosemite routes; El Nino 5.13c/30, Golden Gate 5.13a/29 and Free Rider 5.12d/27. The style they were climbed in was unprecedented.
Climbing Riders on the Storm in Patagonia earlier this year.

"Climbing for me is about expression, expression of who I am and what I see when I look at a piece of rock. Finding a route that tests every element of me before allowing me top-out is what I look for. My ideal climbing experience would on be an unclimbed, daunting looking line that had a lot of hard climbing a bit of choss and some tricky gear."

Lee is fascinated by the process of climbing ever harder routes, whether traditional or sport. This fascination has led to much research into training and the ingenious development of specific testing apparatus as well as training tools and methods. He is currently working part-time work as a climbing guide and coach.

Lee has recently returned from a trip to Patagonia where he and Jake Bresnehan made an epic ascent of Riders on the Storm on the Central Tower of Paine see http://jakeandlee.blogspot.com/ for the full story.

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