Some Scottish Bouldering News 2012

Some news from the travelling band...

May 2012

Greg Chapman of LakesBloc and Rock and Run has been busy exploring in the Ross of Mull, adding the hardest problems to date on the superb pink granite that pokes out from under Mull's tertiary lavas around Fionnphort. His two best finds were both 7c+ on steep prows north-east of Kintra. Many other walls and problems are being developed, with exciting new stones to be revealed soon! It's good to see such plum lines finding attention - Mull is full of potential for everyone. Check the Mull page for a sample Google map of some areas.

April 2012

Dominic Ward has done some cracking new problems high up on the Bealach na Ba at Applecross: a new direct problem on the Sanctuary Cave (Kneed for Sanctuary), and a new crag called the Sia Stone has given some quality problems. Nic has kindly donated a topo for the area on the Applecross page, he'd appreciate some feedback, and maybe some traffic on these stones! Cheers, Nic.

March 2012

Dave MacLeod has succeeded on his long term project on the Skeleton Boulder in Glen Nevis. He climbed the project just before a bouldering trip to Switzerland, where he climbed Mystic Stylez, 8c.

Commenting on his new problem Natural Method, he said it was the '...Hardest thing I've one this year by a mile!' Dave has suggested 8b+ as a grade. I'm sure the Swiss experience, on similarly-styled rock to Glen Nevis, allowed him to contextualize the grade. It just looks superb, full of intricate and, of course, very powerful moves. Dave explains in his blog how the climb was a return to the 'natural method' of improving bouldering by bouldering lots!

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...

Cobbled Together

The south peak ('Jean') on The Cobbler, 12th December 2015 Here's an interesting round-song of place-names for Arrochar, in cartullaries and statistical and printed records since 1395: Arrochar/Arochar/Arrochquhair/Arrochquhare/Arroquhar/Arachar/An Tairbeart Iar/An t-Àra ... I was walking uphill wondering what sticks, what's in a name, why do they change, does the landscape care, who are the caretakers of a place-name? We might just be flecks of mica flashing briefly on a sun-struck pebble in the streams, but names are important to us in our brief mappings of our landscapes. Our human territories are marked by names, sign-postings, marker boulders, paths and cairns, amongst other structures, both textual and physical. 'The Cobbler' mountain - Arrochar's finest and most distinctive peak - is a curious example of the fluidity of naming the landscape; of confusion, habit, fashion, politics, class, and misinformation. The confusion starts even w...

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...

Stone Country – Landscapes and Lifescapes

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