Training Motivation

Fun early season sport at Kirriemuir

This time of year naturally seems to see the most psyched and virulent spell of training, with the longer days stretching our anticipation and the usual eternal optimism of the Scottish climber that this year is going to be a blinder - better train for it! Getting up to speed with the sport climbing is the usual priority and in March the crowds descend on Hamish Ted's... Is there a more popular sports climb in Scotland? I doubt it.

Personally motivation to train means I have new things to go at. Plus a three week bout of flu and migraines have left me desperate to get out or at least to train with a view to these big stones and walls awaiting the sending winds and blue sky days. As an inveterate hunter of boulders, I have a few plums tucked away in some very obscure places, though some are not so remote and I pass on as many as I keep to myself... I'd rather see folk enjoying new rock where I know the climbing is beyond me. So watch out for a few pointers soon on this blog, I'll unload a few big stones with grid refs.

It would be good to see folk exploring a bit deeper into the glens and higher up the hills - most of the big walls are known of, but I guess a boulder is now the new microcosm of personal discovery in technical climbing, maybe it was inevitable - I wonder what Cunningham and Smith and even Raeburn would have thought of it all? And is trad dead, with only the weird metaphysics of headpointing (bouldering with death) the rarified realm of a chosen few? Who knows where climbing is heading...

This year, as I struggle to get back into the harness and train to some degree of competence, bouldering is taking a back seat. I'll be touring round the sports crags and big walls of Scotland with a view to the next few publications from Stone Country.

In the meantime, I'm filling a bottle with my customised 'special' sports drink and heading to the 45 board. Circuits and circles...

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.

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...

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....

Stone Country – Landscapes and Lifescapes

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