Skip to main content

January 6th-12th - a settling

...not Scotland, as was promised!
Towards the end of the week, the weather has settled a little and some clear skies and frosts set in. A massive coronal mass ejection (CME or solar storm) was predicted to hit the atmosphere on Thursday, but it was weaker than predicted and evening jaunts to the higher ground round Glasgow were fruitless. Iceland and Norway stole the show, seen live on Skygazing live on the BBC, or the 'lucky-bastards show' as it should be called. Hopefully an active sun will continue to have colourful hissy fits this winter...

The clearer skies finally combined with a weekend, so on Saturday 11th, with the east of the country draped with medallions on the forecast, Colin and myself headed to Glen Lednock. Treacherous black ice on the pass over to Comrie (with a buckled jeep in a ditch behind a scribble of swerve-lines on the road) led to a slow approach but we made it up to Invergeldie Farm and stomped the locked-gate approach to the dam for the first enjoyable bouldering session of the year.

The rock was still a little green and the top-outs coated in spindrift snow, but some stiff-fingered bouldering could still be enjoyed. A fine outlook and good venue, with Creag Iochdair on the east flank looking like it should really be developed more. Good to see another party arrive and brave the icy conditions - if the access to the dam car-parks were resurrected, this would be a popular venue, but an unenlightened and regressive landowning approach seems to be a thorn-in-the-side here. But Scottish law and access rights will prevail...


Glen Lednock bouldering

Labels:

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