Stone Country – Landscapes and Lifescapes

Living Stones ‘ For although we are accustomed to separate nature and human perception into two different realms, that are in fact indivisible. Before it can ever be a repose for the senses, landscape is a work of the mind. Its scenery is built up as much from strata of memory as from layers of rock .’ Simon Schama, Landscape & Memory The American anthropologist A. Irving Hallowell spent most of his research time amongst the Ojibwe culture of Canada. This culture he discovered did not distinguish between the animate and the inanimate. In fact, any object or being could find itself attributed to a living being with answerable qualities. He found the Ojibwe exhibited a seamless ability to 'see' a stone or tree as alive or animated with some spirit of being in much the same way a person is, and the waking world to be as mutable as the dreaming world. Any phenomenon, whether it be a bird, a stone, a tree, or even the sound of thunder, could all act as tempo...

This quartz-veined schist wave of rock is a south-facing glacial crag easily spotted in a field on the A84, opposite St Bride’s Chapel and graveyard, a few kilometres north of Callander as it passes along the Garbh Uisge’s ‘Falls of Leny’ and the south end of Loch Lubnaig. It is easily accessible from a straight-road layby south of the chapel, cross the road (carefully, as traffic is fast), walk north and enter a field to walk over to the crag - two minutes. The bulging crag has a number of short traditional routes surmounting the ramp onto slabs, such as the flake crack Bride’s Crack (HVS) on the right, but below the distinctive rising ramp feature is a steep wall with increasingly hard and higher problems from left to right. The wall has been bouldered on only sporadically since the 70s, so names and grades are speculative and first ascents are murky. Angus Clark and John Watson repeated the obvious problems in 2007 and 2008 respectively, possibly documenting and naming alrea...

The maritime sliver of schist and quartzite that is the Isle of Gigha is an island of two coasts: a sheltered riviera of sandy bays on the east and a weathered and hardened west coast facing the Atlantic between Kintyre and the Oa of Islay. The central ridge of the island is wooded on the lee side and shelters most of the community around the hub of Ardminish and the old wooded Achamore. For climbers, the best trail is the west coast from the south pier to the summit of Creag Bhan, which is a day-long walk between ferries with some good climbing and bouldering, largely underdeveloped. The northern island of Eilean Garbh has some steep crags for sport-heads and a remarkable tombolo beach, polluted to hell with plastic on the drift side but postcard-perfect on the lee side. Walk up from the pier to the village shop at Ardminish, turn left and south past the hotel to the south of the island, past Achamore gardens and Gigha windfarm - the ‘dancing ladies’, four windmills as of 2...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Torridon-Bouldering-Ian-Taylor/dp/0992704405/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1526379261&sr=8-1&keywords=torridon+bouldering+guide

I am glad every time I see a new independent publisher - Three Rock Books (AKA Dave Flanagan from Dublin) - as it's a tough, odourless, online world for those who still like the smell of freshly printed gloss paper. Especially publishers who design and produce such quality books on bouldering as this, bringing another life-giving breath of literature to the genre.

Craigmaddie, the 'Northumberland in Glasgow' venue, really comes into its own in summer. Its rough sandstone is grippy and dries out nicely, leaving some of the damper winter roofs open for new lip traverses and deep cave starts. Colin Lambton, 'king of the lip traverse' and John Watson, unlocked the 'Stellar Adventure' lip traverse of the Sheep Pen left roof, which has brushed up well to give a classic outing...

Here's the interview with 'The Boulder' author Francis Sanzaro - a fascinating insight into how to use thinking as a 'mental coaching' approach to  better bouldering. The book is available for purchase on the Bookshop Page >>>

Just published and now available! The new publication from Stone Country - 'The Boulder: A Philosophy for Bouldering' by US climber and philosopher Francis Sanzaro - is a paperback edition of 192 pages, with photographs, and features a foreword by none other than John Gill, perhaps the original guru of proper bouldering... 

Ever since we did the Essential Fontainebleau guide, I have been overcome with a sense of dread that doing guides for this forest is putting far too much pressure on it, a bit like the woodcutters of the 19th century who paradoxically opened the unusually featured rocks to the the light and the painters of the Barbizon school...

Well it all looks spanking new and freshly minted rock as it first was... and the lads are doing a good job to be careful with holds and 'historical' graffiti after advice from climbers. As for the climbing I think there may be a short window while it feels grittier, but no doubt shoe resin and chalk and weather, and budding Banksies, will see it back to good ol' Dumby glass. Remember no climbing this week until after 5pm to let the guys finish their work. Toto at Dumby from John Watson on Vimeo .

Mark Dobson on Jamie's Overhang Left 6b -  a forgotten belter The boulders at Craigmore are tiny, the crag routes only a few metres. It is a place for locals only, for top-roping, not meant to be seen as anything other than diversionary. Travelling rock-rats shrug and do a couple of the over-starred routes on top-route, maybe pull a few of the more obvious problems and leave, thinking it a heap of dank green esoterica best left to, yes, you guessed it - the locals. That's all fine with me and I'm not going to praise it to the skies and rate it as Scotland's last hidden secret - it's not. It's a north-facing crag. That usually keeps the crowds away. Everything bad about it is obvious on arrival, mostly: it's boggy, muddy, vegetated, slimy, midgy, repetitive, confusing, dark, chilly, always condition-dependent. Most happily affirm it is deservedly forgotten and overshadowed by its big neighbour at Dumbarton. But I love forgotten places and I go there...

A week on the Ross of Mull. A high pressure settling over Scotland in February. Sunshine and pink granite... iron and stone. The week is a lesson in learning how not to shred yourself on large quartz and feldspar crystals, learning what can and cannot be climbed; the subtle differences between a blank wall and a smearable slab...  Danny's Wall Fionnphort If you turn left off the ferry at Craignure on Mull, you’re heading west along a gradually ageing sequence of geologies, through the tertiary gabbro lavas of Glen More to the earlier basal lavas at Pennyghael and the older still Caledonian schists of Bunessan and beyond. Then it all goes pink-panther and you hit a very old and colourful granite around 413 million years old, lavishly outcropping around the ferry port of Fionnphort, like so many bald monk-heads poking out of the machair and turf, occasionally sunburnt to a deeper red. Then it gets all historical on the ferry to Iona and its ancient Lewisian bedrock ...

We'll be publishing an exciting new book by Francis Sanzaro in early 2013 and we've just got the cover (with thanks to Boone Speed for such a terrific shot). The book's called ' The Boulder: A Philosophy for Bouldering ' and it analyses bouldering in depth. It's an inspiring read, written with great clarity and poetry by a boulderer and academic philosopher who listens to what he does and is able to unfold the complex mental and physical origami that is bouldering. He explains to us what we're really doing, or perhaps what we are truly enjoying, when we boulder. The more you think about bouldering, the harder it is to say what it is, but Francis has done a terrific job bringing a distinct voice to the sport. The book will be available in March 2013 and I'll put some sample pages up around Christmas as a taster.

This unremarkable and indistinct bump of moss is remarkable for its surroundings rather than the character of its summit. The more satisfying ascent (if not climbing Meall Corranach) starts from the Roro bridge in Glen Lyon, a few km east of Bridge of Balgie, with the recommended circuit going up the east glen and a grassy descent down to the west glen. Glen Lyon Park at the Roro bridge testing station and swing round the road to a T-junction, heading left towards Roromore. Just before the fence at the Allt a' Chobhair, follow the burn uphill by a fence through more interesting scenery than the farm track across the river. It leads past some glacial boulders to the old shieling village under Coire Ban's scree slopes. Follow the wall uphill to the Coire and either strike up left steeply, or follow the fence right to the blunt ridge of Sron Eich. A gradually easing angle leads south to the summit plateau of Meall a Choire Leith, which I think is named after the adjacent ...

The sandstone boulders under the cliffs of Raasay have seen some serious attention from top-end climbers Michael Tweedley and Dave MacLeod. Dave reported an amazing and very continental-looking project on the giant boulders round Screapadal. Dave reports on the stunning potential of the area in his blog : 'We spent ages looking round the boulders finding countless problems in the V0-V3 range that looked great, but not much for ourselves. But finally we stumbled upon one line that changed our psyche - the biggest, baddest Font 7c/+ roof in Scotland!' Beastmaker Dan Varian has written a hilarious blog about the ups and downs of Scottish bouldering, cranking out some big new testpieces in Torridon and Applecross in June. Lovingly entitled '3 days in Paradise, 1 day in a Shithole', you can tell he wasn't impressed by Dumbarton! Don't worry, Dan, we feel you and are trying to get the place cleaned up! See here for further developments on the clean-up and developme...

Gaz Marshall has completed his topo for Laggan, which is one of the better Central Highland venues and has featured regularly on Gaz's blog Soft Rock . Strongbow is must-do problem and worth visiting just on its own: 'Two jumbles of schist boulders, one North and one South of the village, have been found and developed by local Aviemorons. This is a guide to current developments; Creagan Soillier, aka Laggan 1, North of the village, and Creag Bhuidhe, aka Laggan 2, to the South...' More details on the Laggan page... thanks Gaz!

One of the unfortunate consequences of doing a full-colour photo-book with essays is neglecting to give enough space for the written word. We published Stone Play - the Art of Bouldering in 2007 and it was  well received as a book which gave bouldering a voice outside of the traditional climbing sphere, allowing it a little philosophy of its own. However, many articles had to be cut to allow a fuller complement of photography, one of the most expensive and unnecessary mistakes I've made in publishing! Since then, much more has been written on the aesthetics of bouldering and there is a vibrant and growing literature to match its online presence in video and image. So, we've decided to revisit the book, but this time reducing the fascination with the image (heavily saturated in our online age) and allowing the written word to coax out the subtle and elusive experience of bouldering. On re-reading, the words are generally so much more adept at capturing the fluid inner-...

I still haven't bagged them all and I guess I don't feel that urge or itch - just being on the flanks of hills, in the bowels of corries, in deep lush gorges with no escape, in echoey stone shoots, or buffeted on the steep faces of rock, it doesn't matter to me where I am on the hill, I'm just happy to be out, like the stag who knows there are parts of the mountain for every season. The summit is for a peculiar kind of  beast and the odd and very British fad for Munro bagging is now a kind of institutionalised fever that is as popular as ever. So what does a climber do when it rains, or tweaks a tendon, or is just sore and old...? Go for a walk... I would recommend getting a good Munro guide and stomping around a few, you'll enjoy it and I guarantee you'll find some new rock. I was on Aonach Beag recently and was delighted to discover a tremendous face of rock high on the hill with only a handful of routes on it and in the corrie a host of largely untouched...

Johhny Dawes' Indian clone... static stickmen will be appalled. Guy Robertson sent me this, saying he has given it all up to go hillwalking. I think I will do the same, with my flask of soup and red socks.