British climber Franco Cookson has once again shattered the ceiling of bold traditional climbing, making the first ascent of a breathtaking new line at Ben Loyal in northern Scotland. Christened “But Nothing Is Lost,” Cookson has proposed a staggering grade of E12 7a. If confirmed, this would cement the line as the first E12 trad route in the United Kingdom.

A Four-Year Journey into the Abyss

Cookson is no stranger to toeing the line between hard technical movement and pure psychological terror (as seen on his previous E11 testpiece, Immortal). However, But Nothing Is Lost marks a new chapter in his climbing career. The project demanded over 100 sessions spread across four grueling years of effort.

Speaking on the emotional toll and magnitude of the route, Cookson reflected on the profound, almost spiritual experience of the ascent:

"I'm still a long way off being able to process what happened on this route. I have so many conflicting emotions. Climbing something of this quality and with logistics this complicated is mind blowing, and I know my effort on it over the last 4 years is something I'll never better... The route is perfect, pure and simple, and I struggle to think of many routes worldwide that are its equal."

The Anatomy of an E12

Located on the rugged, sweeping walls of Ben Loyal, the route is a 60-meter, two-pitch odyssey that marries desperately hard face climbing with horrifyingly sparse protection.

  • Pitch 1 (35m, 7a): Led by Cookson, this pitch takes a devious line of weakness, traversing leftwards almost as much as it goes up. It begins with a precarious foot traverse relying on a poor skyhook for protection before transitioning into hard, thin moves on a blunt arête. The climbing remains staggeringly bold, featuring massive run-outs above micro-cams and blind heart-in-mouth stabs to hidden pockets, culminating in a mantel into a flaked crack.
  • Pitch 2 (25m, 6b): Climbed with his belayer and climbing partner, Robbie Phillips, the second pitch offers a jarring change of pace. Phillips took the sharp end for a gritty, Yosemite-esque wide offwidth crack. Phillips described it as an E5 "thrutch," featuring dry, flaky lichen and a desperate chicken-wing to the summit.

Redefining the UK Trad Scale

To put the proposed grade into perspective, the E (Extreme) scale in British trad climbing factors in both the physical difficulty of the hardest move (the technical grade, here 7a) and the overall danger, sustained nature, and psychological demand of the route. An E12 grade suggests an almost unfathomable mix of elite-level sport climbing difficulty paired with absolute, "do-not-fall" death consequences.

While James Pearson recently established Bon Voyage in Annot, France (also widely accepted as E12), Cookson’s ascent brings the grade home to British soil. For Cookson, however, the numbers take a backseat to the sheer experience of existing on the wall.

“Great routes are worth climbing not because they are a scalp to patch over a hole in your ego, but because they manifest a relationship between us humans and nature—in its maximal form," Cookson noted, summing up his philosophy on the extraordinary undertaking.

As the UK climbing community digests the news of this monumental ascent, one thing is certain: Franco Cookson has etched his name even deeper into the history books of bold British trad climbing.