Skip to main content

April Bouldering News

Chahala sit start Font 8a

I guess I'll add a lot more to this when I get some more news but while I was away in Chile, some more big numbers were graffiti'd to Dumbarton: Dave succeeded on the oft-attempted sit start to Chahala...Font 8a! Lots of body tension, finger strength, clamping and wild throwing required. Dave also added a new sitter under the Mugsy headwall called Set in Motion at 7c+ though you might need the holds pointed out, it seems to share holds with Spam. Anyway, well done to Dave for a rich vein of bouldering form over the season! He also repeated Kayla at Portlethen, which makes it the fourth after Tim Rankin, Luke Fairweather and Niall McNair? Methods and grades apparently vary from 7c to 8a... all a stramash of numbers really, let's just say the line is good and it's nails!!

DaveMacLeod on his own 'Set In Motion' 7c+ at Dumby

Chris Graham has been busy cleaning up the open dot projects from the Stone Country book...I deliberately added a few project lines to encourage people to do them and Chris certainly has been putting the book out of date faster than I can write a new edition! He rattled off the 7c's of The Sword at Morar, Out of the Blue at Loch Lomond and now a fine V7 roof line at the Corrie boulders, see the video below. The right hand line is still to go, and there is also a V5 version of this problem using the prop boulder underneath and travelling left on jugs to a shot-hole finish. More details on Arran coming soon.

Popular posts from this blog

Beinn Dòrain

           Viaduct and Beinn Dorain Once you cross the bealach under Beinn Odhar north of Tyndrum, the shapely peak of Beinn Dòrain is a visual fanfare to the Highlands. The mountain and its environs are richly detailed in the poet Duncan Ban MacIntyre’s poem Moladh Beinn Dòbhrain (‘In Praise of Beinn Dòrain’). [i] Its symmetrical convexity, deeply gullied flanks like pencil sketch-marks, and stern domed summit, make this a moment to instinctively reach for the camera. It is a steep but invigorating mountain to walk, which is more leisurely explored from its eastern corries, though the traditional ascent from Bridge of Orchy, up to the toothed ‘Am Fiachlach’ ridge quickly brings fine views from the heart of the Central Highlands, encompassing Cruachan in the west to Lawers in the east and the Mamores to the north. If you were set the task to name the features and character of this mountain, before a Gaelic toponymy, you may have come up with a similar voc...

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...

The Metadata of Being Human

Shamanistic zoomorphs, lithic graffiti, hallucinogenic tableaux, territory markings, knife-sharpeners … rock art – l'art rupestre – is so far beyond our traditional 'linguistic' history, it does not have an interpretative alphabet or a single line of confirmed meaning. There are many interpretations of the 'gravures' (carvings) and 'abris ornés' (decorated caves) in the hidden bivouacs throughout the forest of Fontainebleau. The sandstone marks easily under the nib of a hard flint from the deeper calcareous geology and this soft stone canvas has allowed our European ancestors to carve the stylised and modernistic strokes we might note as remarkable in a Picasso painting. Most of the carvings involve complex hash-marks and grids, overlaying each other, occasionally with mandala-like boxes. Sometimes there have been carved astonishingly beautiful anthropomorphs, (stylised human-like figures), or zoomorphs, (deities or humans manifesting in animal form) or argu...