Skip to main content

Dynos

A recent post on Scottish bouldering dyno's had me trawling through my video collection and I found a few interesting ones and it made me think of the great Gill era of American dynoing and the whole ethic of using dynamic moves to bypass difficult static sequences. There are those who swear by 'static' methods and sneer at these athletic shortcuts of dynoing as a form of cheating gravity, or giving in to a lack of forethought. these are usually hardbitten trad climbers, who naturally wouldn't countenance a full on throw half way up Torro, or on the Etive Slabs (though I know people who have fallen on the slabs and attempted to turn and run down to the ground).

Dynoing is mostly a bouldering art and fits it perfectly, allowing impressive 'parkour-style' solutions through gravity's well, without the threat of crumpling groundfalls or nipple-grating slides. Boulder mats allow a little more adventure in this respect as well, so it's not unusual for boulderers to seek out the perfect dyno. These can be found anywhere with a little use of imagination, but classic dyno's such as the Buckstone dyno in the Peak, or Vienna at Bowden, are rare.

Scotland has a few classic dynamic-style problems - my list would include:

Cathc 22 V9 - Sky Pilot Glen Nevis
The Shield V9 - Dumby
Slap Happy - V6 -Dumbarton (dynamic version) Andy Gallagher dynoing through Slap Happy
Boomer Dyno - V2 - Stronachlachlar Stronachlachlar Boomer Dyno V2
The Pit - V5 - Portlethen The Pit dyno Portlethen
The Main Issue V8 - Reiff in the Woods (bold) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28KUcHnMcHo

Popular posts from this blog

The Lost Township of Grulin on Eigg

‘The Stony Place’ as it translates, the archaeological notes on the RCAHMS database for Eigg, state baldly the lost humanity of Grulin as early as an 1880 OS survey map: ‘…eighteen unroofed buildings, six enclosures and a field-system’. Now a scheduled monument and memorialised as a ‘depopulated settlement’, though it is not obvious if the verb is passive or aggressive, Grulin Uachdrach (Grulin Upper) is, like Hallaig on Raasay, a place of violent silence and resonance. Who lived here and why was the site abandoned? If it were not in Scotland, suspicions might fall to the climate, remoteness and apparent unsustainability of the stony place, a rabble of large rocks under the steep slopes of An Sgurr, but the carefully constructed walls tell us it was once a thriving township – the kilns, folds and blackhouse walls integrated with the giant boulders such as Clach Hosdail. In 1853 the whole of the village of Grulin, both upper and lower, housed fourteen families who were forced to l...

Timeline Walks of Scotland #Hallaig to Screapadal on Raasay

'Tha tìm, am fiadh, an coille Hallaig ...' Hallaig - the lost village of Raasay - is a powerful place. Arguably, it has become a shibboleth for the soul of Gaelic culture. To visit it, to just be there momentarily and feel the resonance of the place, is to know the fragility of place and home, of how kinship can be shattered and how loss can invade a land. Aptly, Hallaig is now a site of pilgrimage for those who value the universal lessons of history.  There are t errible reasons for the loss of Hallaig. Its silent mouths of abandoned shielings, the dumb sheep meandering amongst the ruins, whisper with Sorley MacLean's poetry. The place misses the sounds of day-to-day community, and all around the woods and burns and slopes this tough but rich landscape once made this a hardy paradise under the eastern cliffs of Raasay. Facing east to the dawn and overlooking the peninsula of Applecross and the berry-dark depths of the Inner Sound, the walk to Hallaig leads quietly...

Scotland's Iconic Mountains #Broad Law

BROAD LAW The rolling hills east of the modern motorway of the M74 hold much more character and history than they appear from the west, where they are now flanked by forestries of spruce and wind-farms. In medieval times this was a Scottish royal hunting ground – the ‘Ettrick Forest’.  Further east towards the Tweed valley, there are echoes of a deeper Scottish history in the border towns of Hawick, Selkirk, Galashiels, Peebles and Kelso, all on the banks of the historic River Tweed and famous for their medieval forts and abbeys.  Looking west from Broad Law to the monoculture forestry and wind-farms of 21st C Scotland This range of hills, along with the northern flanks of the Cheviot hills, marks the geographical transition to the once-contested border with Northumberland, with its high pass over Carter Bar on the A68. The more useful sense of boundaries are suggested not by the roads but by the watersheds: to the north the waters drain into the River Cly...