 Name: Ben Bransby Hometown: North Rigton Sport: Climbing I’ve been climbing all my life. I was born in the village of North Rigton just below Almscliff crag and it’s where I learnt to walk and as soon as I could walk I learnt to climb. I learnt to climb on the grit but moved into comps, trad, first ascents, winter climbing, alpine climbing etc. I’ve yet to find a style of climbing I don’t enjoy. I now live in Hathersage with my wife, daughter and multiple dogs. I spend a huge amount of time bouldering on the local crags but still love the weekends or trips away to the sea cliffs and mountain crags and occasionally the bigger venues abroad. If you give me an opening I’ll talk to you about Patagonia for hours #backintheday. I try to be an all rounder at climbing – I definitely enjoy pretty much all aspects of the sport; from indoor comps to mountains. I started out as a full on trad climber but this last year 90% of my climbing has been bouldering. Apart from climbing I love skiing, doing dog stuff with my family and hanging out in pubs with my climbing mates talking about how good we used to be, how the kids nowadays have it easy… no wonder they climb harder than us now etc. One of the climbs I enjoyed the most was climbing Freerider on El Cap in a day with my good Swiss friend Jvan Tresch. We approached it pretty much just like any multi pitch climb – leading and seconding free, swinging leads, no hauling just climbed with what we could carry… topped out just as it was still light before walking out in our rock boots. Some other friends hiked up with celebratory beers but as we had climbed so fast we didn’t meet them until half way down but we still enjoyed some cans of King Cobra with them. My biggest success has been reaching the age of 41 without ever having a proper job! Instinct VSR – fit my foot really well. My old Freedom SL ski boots – did over 150 days of skiing in them one winter when my wife took a sabbatical and we took our daughter out of school and went traveling for a year. The top of a powder run after a dump of snow or the bottom of a sea cliff zawn below an unclimbed line. In both cases just thinking of the smells, noises and views bring back really strong happy memories and in both cases I would be pretty excited as well. |
