Skip to main content

Dumby Sport

This fine sunny weather and still reasonably cool air makes Dumbarton a real pleasure and I got my psyche back for the sports routes there. Sufferance is an old bug bear and I need to get back on it, with the recent repeats by Will Atkinson and Nic Duboust leaving it well chalked and telegraphed, I am inspired, so no excuse.

For a quick evening's visit, we warmed up on Abstract Art but the top move to the greasy ledge is still wet - it's such a shame this route gets so green as it provides some excellent technical climbing for 6c. In fact this whole slabby wall would make good sports routes but some never-to-be repeated trad routes live here. The E7 I can (maybe) see as a classic highball challenge, but the other routes never get repeats and the trad ethic, though admirable, sometimes freezes rock into an historical lock-down and anti-social isolation! But I'm starting a dangerous argument, best leave well alone!

Wanting to test my respoint skills I went on to do Persistence of Vision, the super 7a+ 'slab' under Requiem. This is deservedly the most popular sport route at around this grade at Dumby, but the crux is putting the clip into the top bolt, you have to stretch with clipper in hand, lunge dynamically the last few inches, clip and hold as you swing off, extend, lower, then do the route! With the extended clipper it is a lot more do-able and a real cracker to redpoint.

Sufferance awaits as usual.

Popular posts from this blog

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...
Read more

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...
Read more

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...
Read more