Athletes inspired by National Parks
Celebrating our winning landscapes
Inspired by the Lake District
Leo Houlding
Sport: Climbing
Leo Houlding, aged 30, is based in the Lake District National Park and he’s one of Britain’s top young climbers and a pioneer of the extreme sport of 'para-alpinism' - climbing up huge rock faces then parachuting off.
Leo grew up in the Lake District and started climbing in 1990 at the age of 10. Just six months later he and his Dad acquired the taste for adventure climbing - and Leo became the youngest person to climb the Scottish sea stack, the Old Man of Hoy. By the time Leo was 15 he had become the British Junior Indoor Climbing Champion.
Aged just 18 he made a famous 'free climb' of the cliff face El Nino in Yosemite, California. Since then he has also climbed Everest, making a film in 2010 in which he recreated the last steps of Irvine and Mallory's ill-fated 1924 attempt to scale the peak.
More information
In 2009 he was nominated by the Daily Telegraph as one of Britain's top adventurers: www.telegraph.co.uk/great-British-adventurers
Leo's website is www.leohoulding.com
