When the weather plays ball, the United Kingdom’s varied landscapes are home to a veritable rock climbing playground. From the wild buttresses and corries of the Scottish Highlands and the rhyolite of North Wales, to the gritstone grandeur of the Peak District and the limestone gorges of the south west, there’s more to get psyched about on Britain’s shores than you could climb in a lifetime. Meanwhile, the UK’s 12,500 kilometers of coast provide some of the world’s most iconic sea cliff climbs.
It should come as no surprise that, across the disciplines of trad, sport and bouldering, Britain has produced its fair share of elite climbers, including legendary characters like Jerry Moffat and Don Whillans, bouldering greats like Will Bosi, and current men’s combined Olympic sport climbing champion Toby Roberts. Perhaps it’s the mix of unpredictable weather, long walk ins and the grit needed to climb on British shores that has forged such a rich climbing heritage.
Below we take a look at some of Britain’s greatest ever rock climbers, from the ‘Father of Rock Climbing’ in the 1880s to those pushing the boundaries today.
Britain’s greatest ever rock climbers
Here’s our selection of Britain’s greatest ever rock climbers. As was the case when compiling our selection of Britain’s greatest ever mountaineers, it’s impossible to do everyone who deserves to be on this list justice, and many climbing legends have not made the cut. There are individuals – such as Don Whillans, Joe Brown, George Mallory and Mick Fowler – who perhaps deserve a place on both, though I’ve decided to include more people only once across both lists, rather than detail the same people twice.
So, don’t consider this to be the definitive list of Britain’s greatest ever rock climbers but a celebration of some of the finest and most important characters from down the years. I often refer to trad, sport or bouldering grades – see our guide to climbing rating systems for context.
So, without further ado, here’s a selection of Britain’s greatest ever rock climbers:
Walter Parry Haskett Smith: Historically important figure who is referred to as the ‘Father of Rock Climbing’.
Menlove Edwards: Fearless climber who lived a checkered life that was tragically cut short in 1958.
Don Whillans: Working class hero who achieved great things in both climbing and mountaineering.
Joe Brown: Legendary climber best known for being the first to summit Kanchenjunga, along with George Band, in 1955.
Jerry Moffat: At one point regarded the world’s greatest climber, Moffat was a huge and prolific presence in the ’80s and ’90s.
Dave MacLeod: Incredibly bold Scottish rock and ice climber who has pulled off many staggering climbs.
Hazel Findlay: Sport and big wall climbing great who’s achieved a string of firsts.
Will Bosi: Contemporary bouldering great at the cutting edge of the pursuit.
Meet the expert
Alex Foxfield
Former President of the London Mountaineering Club, Alex is passionate about exciting outdoor pursuits. He enjoys all forms of climbing, whether trad, sport, scrambling, alpine mountaineering or taking on snow-covered peaks in winter.
Walter Parry Haskett Smith
Haskett Smith was born in 1859, in Bognor Regis, a seaside resort in southern England. He enjoyed a privileged upbringing and was educated at Eton College, the prestigious boarding school that has produced many of Britain’s most famous politicians, scientists and actors, as well as being the alma mater of a few royals.
In the 1880s, rock climbing was, in essence, practised by early hillwalkers and mountaineers, who’d seek out the easiest line up a mountain, sometimes involving difficult scrambling or what we’d consider to be easy climbing today. However, climbing for the sake of climbing, rather than for the sake of a summit, was not really a thing.
In 1881, Haskett Smith travelled to the English Lake District and stayed at the now famous Wasdale Head Hotel, with a view to exploring the regions cliffs, formations and buttresses. He’d begin to record his efforts on short, hard climbs on while exploring the likes of the Scafells, England’s highest mountains, and the pyramidal peak at the head of the valley – Great Gable.
It was here that his most famous climb took place, on the iconic Napes Needle, a glorious rhyolite pinnacle, in 1886. Haskett Smith managed to climb it without protective equipment. In essence, it was one of the first recorded free solos in history.
Menlove Edwards
An incredibly complicated character who pulled off an array of staggeringly bold first ascents on the mountains of North Wales’ Eryri (Snowdonia), John Menlove Edwards was a great of the pre-World War II era. Born near Liverpool in 1910, he’d grow to be a fearless climber and all-round adventurer. His wild swimming (of course, back then it was just called “swimming”) and canoeing feats were just as hair-raising as his climbs.
While he sent new routes on the Lake District’s Scafells, it was north Wales where Edwards’ legacy is richest. He put up new lines many of Eryri’s most iconic mountains and on the now popular crags above the Llanberis Pass, often on terrain that was considered completely unachievable and dangerous at the time.
Edwards was secretly gay, which was against the law at the time, and had a close relationship with fellow climbing great Wilfrid Noyce. A conscientious objector during the Second World War, his mental health deteriorated through the 1940s and ’50s and he was sectioned on several occasions. Tragically, he committed suicide in 1958.
Don Whillans
Working class hero Don Whillans shook up the establishment, rising from a humble background to become a titan in the worlds of rock climbing and mountaineering. He accomplished great things in the latter, including the summit of Annapurna, alongside Dougal Haston, during the Chris Bonington-led British Annapurna South Face expedition in 1970. It was a pioneering adventure and one of the first to purposefully climb an 8,000-meter peak by a difficult line.
Born in Salford, Manchester, in 1933, Whillans began his adventures by hiking on the nearby Pennine Moors and climbing on the gritstone of the Peak District. In 1951, he met fellow legend Joe Brown at the Roaches, a popular gritstone crag. The two would go on to form a fruitful partnership, putting up many impressive new routes, notably in the Peak District and Eryri (Snowdonia).
He was a rebellious character with penchant for alcohol and smoking. His excesses caught up with him in 1985, when he died from a heart attack, aged 52. Today, his legacy lives on at the Don Whillans Hut, a beguiling building carved into the very rock of the Roaches, a classic climbing crag in the southern Peak District.
Joe Brown
As with Whillans, Joe Brown ascended to glory from modest beginnings in both the fields of rock climbing and mountaineering. His name is forever etched in high-altitude mountaineering folklore as the first person to stand on the summit of Kanchenjunga, the world’s third highest mountain, along with George Band in 1955.
Born in Manchester, 1930, he’d go on to form a highly successful partnership with fellow northerner Don Whillans. Brown’s rock routes in North Wales were particularly pioneering. He’s responsible for more routes than it’s possible to go into here but special mention goes to the classic E1s Cenotaph Corner and Cemetery Gates in the Llanberis Pass, as well as first ascents on Clogwyn Du’r Arddu (or ‘Cloggy’, as it’s affectionately known), a legendary crag on Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon).
After success of Kanchenjunga, 1956 he was back in the Greater Ranges for the first ascent of the west summit of Pakistan’s Muztagh Tower, alongside Ian McNaught-Davis. Further trips around the world followed and he’d continue putting up new routes well into his 70s, both at home and in more exotic locations, such as Morocco’s Anti-Atlas. Brown died at his home at the age of 89 in Llanberis, at the foot of Yr Wyddfa, in 2020.
Jerry Moffat
A contemporary and friend of German sport climbing legends Wolfgang Güllich and Kurt Albert (the originator of the redpoint philosophy), Moffat was widely considered the finest climber in the world during the mid 1980s.
Born in Leicester in 1963, he burst onto the British climbing scene in the early ’80s, a time when sport climbing was just emerging as a distinct pursuit from trad. He made short work of the most impressive climbs in Britain and, by 1984, had pretty much chalked off the hardest routes in the US, France and Germany, becoming one of the world’s first professional climbers while he was at it. This included the hugely intimidating Master’s Wall (E7, 6b), a stunning trad route on Yr Wyddfa’s (Snowdon) Clogwyn Du’r Arddu. Moffat later said that it was on this climb that he ‘risked most’.
Whether sport, trad or bouldering, there was seemingly nothing Moffat couldn’t turn his talents to and, in 1983, he’d go on to become the first person in history to climb at the 8a+ (5.13c) sport climbing grade when he sent The Face in Germany’s Altmühl Valley.
He’d reached a peak of sorts in 1984, onsighting The Phoenix (7c+, 5.13a), a devilishly hard crack climb in Yosemite. An elbow injury ruled him out for a couple of years, but from 1987 onwards, Moffat was back and more motivated than ever, pulling off staggering first ascents, such as 1988’s Stone Love (8b+, 5.14a) in Germany’s iconic Frankenjura and 1990’s Liquid Ambar (8c+) on Pen Trwyn in North Wales, the first of that grade in the world. A decorated competition climber too during his short stint from 1989 to 1990, he famously retired from competition while ranked first in the world.
Moffat made way for Steve McClure, who took over the gong as Britain’s leading sport climber in the late ’90s, ’00s and beyond.
Dave MacLeod
Born in 1978, Dave MacLeod is a hugely decorated Scottish climber known for his trad prowess, mixed climbing, bouldering and incredibly bold free solos. And when I say incredibly bold, I mean it. In 2008, he became only the second person in history to free solo and 8b+ (5.14a) climb on Darwin Dixit in Margalef. Technically, this grade is higher than Alex Honnold’s famous free solo of Freerider (5.13a), though Yosemite tends to go tough at the grade and there’s also the not insignificant fact that Freerider is over 63 times as high…
Nevertheless, this sort of achievement underlines just how bold MacLeod can be. In 2006, he sent Rhapsody (E11, 7a) on Scotland’s Dumbarton Crag, at the time the world’s most challenging trad climb. However, he potentially topped this with Echo Wall (ungraded, possible E11) on Scotland’s Ben Nevis, a 70-meter arête in a wild and remote setting. The climb was unrepeated until August 2024, when James Pearson made the second ascent. Then there’s MacLeod’s bouldering achievements, where he’s claimed a career high of V15/8C.
MacLeod is also a talented winter mountaineer, signified by his magnificent 2010 ascent of the 220-meter Anubis, again on Ben Nevis. This E8 summer route was graded as a Scottish Winter grade XII, 12 – a huge step up in terms of what was previously thought possible in winter climbing. This has since been eclipsed by modern great Greg Boswell, who climbed Bring da Ruckus (grade XII, 13) on Lochnagar in Scotland’s Cairngorms National Park in 2023.
Hazel Findlay
Born in 1989, North Wales based Hazel Findlay is one of Britain’s most pioneering female climbers. Her climbing odyssey began as a child on the magnificent limestone sea cliffs of Pembrokeshire in South Wales, alongside her father. In her teenage years, she dominated competition, winning the British Junior Championship on six occasions. However, at just 16, she quit competition to focus on climbing outdoors.
She’s developed into an all-rounder, whether as a big wall climber, as a sport climber or as an alpinist, with achievements across disciplines and in places as far flung as Greenland, British Columbia and Yosemite. 2013 was a particularly fruitful year, when she became the first British woman to climb an E9 trad route on Chicama on the North Welsh island of Anglesey. For this, as well as a three-day ascent of Freerider on El Cap (5.13a), she was awarded Climbing Magazine’s Golden Piton Award for trad climbing.
In the States, she became the first British woman to free climb El Capitan in 2011 with her ascent of Golden Gate (5.13a), which she followed up with the first female ascent of the Pre-Muir Wall (5.13c) in 2012, the aforementioned Freerider ascent in 2013 and a 2017 climb of the Salathé Wall (5.13b). In 2022, she joined Yosemite legend Alex Honnold on an expedition to climb Greenland’s gigantic 3,750-foot Ingmikortilaq sea cliff, a feat that was documented in the National Geographic series Arctic Ascent.
Will Bosi
Will Bosi is on the fast-track to becoming a global bouldering legend, mixing it up with the likes of Nalle Nukkataival, Daniel Woods and Shawn Raboutou on the world’s toughest bouldering problems. He’s on a prolific run, having climbed more V17 boulders than anyone else in history – and he’s still in his mid 20s.
In the sport climbing world, Bosi started garnering attention aged 17, when he redpointed Steve McClure’s Rainshadow (9a, 5.14d), the youngest Brit to achieve the grade. A few years later, he sent his hardest sport route with a first ascent of King Capella (9b+) in Spanish sport climbing hotspot Siurana. However, his attention would soon turn to the world’s most challenging boulder problems.
There are only a handful of V17 problems in the world and, between 2022 and 2024, Bosi has claimed repeats of four of them. First, in October 2022 he managed the second repeat of Shawn Raboutou’s Alphane in Switzerland, though he stated that Honey Badger, a problem he’d mastered in the English Peak District a couple of months earlier, was harder. Next up was the first repeat of Nalle Hukkataival’s Burden of Dreams in 2023, at the time considered the hardest boulder in the world. Then, in 2024, he repeated Daniel Woods’ Return of the Sleepwalker in the US’ Red Rock Canyon and Aidan Roberts’ Spots of Time on Swirl Crags, on the lower flanks of England’s Helvellyn massif.
