Skip to main content

Summer Bouldering Updates



The weekend was a washout, especially for the Great Climb on the BBC, shame they had no flexibility built in as High Pressure is just round the corner... as a climber in Scotland you always need a wet weather alternative... so on a wet afternoon in Inverurie, I raced up to the Cullen Caves and bouldered away merrily on the dry steep quartzite caves, doing a few lines on St Duane's Den, with a particularly good traverse and a desperate straight-up (Duane's World, Font 7a+). Topos will appear in the forthcoming Stone Country new edition, but suffice to say some hard projects remain... the caves stay dry in torrential rain, but take plenty of chalk as the quartzite can be damp.

Guy Robertson completed his 8a+ (French grade) traverse at Boltsheugh. This is a low-level traverse of the right-hand sports crag and is a real pumper, though you'll need a local to point out the rules...some holds are plain no-no. Good effort, this is no mean feat to link... a bit like Consolidated...nowhere desperate but very long.

Lee Robinson sent me some pics of a fruitful trip to Applecross, Skye and Torridon, with many new problems and venues discovered. The pick of his achievements seem to be a new testpiece at Torridon called Captain Ahab just along from the Ship boulder, as well as a striking arete at Carn Liath he called Cetorhinus Maximus.


If anyone else has some bouldering news, let me know at boulderscotland@googlemail.com

Popular posts from this blog

Filming in Morar

Pete Murray and myself travelled up to meet Dave MacLeod at his '8c' cave in Morar. This secretive and impressive venue took us a while to find, but was obvious once we did - a 50 degree walled quartzite cave with no moss or drips or lichen and a singular line of chalked holds disappearing into the triangular darkness - Dave's 8c project. I pulled on a few holds the first day and tried one or two moves, but the sheer brutality and power required was too much and we let Dave show us his rubric of moves and contortions that allow the cave to be climbed. The 'easiest' lines appear to be butch 7a's and the top level is close to Dave's idea of Nirvana - long power-plays and complex link-up sequences. We bagged some good film and a short interview about the place which will be forthcoming in a new short film from Pete Murray, to go along with a new collection of writing on bouldering from Stone Country.
Read more

Ben Lomond - a Gaelic palette

Loch Lomond, Wednesday 28th December 2016 Mist, water and silvery light: a very Gaelic palette in midwinter between the storms, which these days all have names - we've been through Barbara's tantrums and Conor's backlash, but today was one of those steamed-up car sort of days. Warmish air from the southwest is rolling about Loch Lomond and gathering a chill as it picks up speed towards the snow-patched summit, so I take the clockwise 'wind with my back' option, steeply up the Ptarmigan ridge from Rowardennan, hearing a chuckle in the mist which is either a red grouse or the eponymous bird. Each landmark on the map is a clue to the Gaelic landscape - Tom Fhithich I think may be the raven's beak-nosed boulder or crag half up towards the knoll of Ptarmigan, which just breaks the mist, and assumes the role of target summit for the meantime as the main peak is in cloud. The small hidden tarns are full of slushy grey ice and the 'yellow bealach' is a...
Read more

Echo Wall Review

This is an exceptional film about the bizarre relationship between mountains, humans and risk. No matter that it features probably the most serious high-end route on the planet, Dave and Claire MacLeod have created a unique vision of obsession, determination and stress. 'Echo Wall' captures all the emotional trauma of climbing at the limit in a situation where failure is unacceptable. As an independent team, Claire and Dave have obviously worked really hard to bring this film together and they succeed in showing some of the sacrifice and pain of climbing what is effectively E12 on the most inhospitable mountain in Britain. 'The Ben' is not always inhospitable and the film opens with some fine time-lapse images of clouds clearing and alpen-glow washing down the peppered eminence of The Comb high in Coire na Ciste. Some helicopter shots give us the right impression that the north face of this mountain is something truly alpine and alien to the lush land 4000 feet below....
Read more