Stone Country – Landscapes and Lifescapes

Ben Brotherton has put on his civic-minded beanie and visited Arran with spade and brushes to help uncover the giant Mushroom boulder. This impressive stone always suffered from a lack of decent top-outs, with many lines ending in jump-offs below sandy earth, turf, moss, other generic greenery and old tree stumps. Ben has now cleaned up many top-outs and the boulder is blessed with the precious summit experience. Here's a new 'complete' line from Ben showing the highball fun on the biggest holds you could wish for!

The most debebilitating illness for any climber aside from the obvious broken bones, death and torn tendons, is viral labyrinthitis, an inner ear vertigo which is like stepping off a kids' roundabout and the feeling sticks. For weeks. A recuperative bout of doing nothing on a non-climbing island seemed appropriate until I grew so frustrated with inactivity I wobbled out of bed and set about the island like a lunchtime drunk looking for a pub. Gigha is a pretty island of meadows and rippled beaches, but it has little rock above chin height, and if it were a PC it would be a 250mb laptop from the 90s, in climbing bittage. However, it is not quite devoid of bouldering algorithms: the craggy trig point Marilyn of Craig Bhan has some white amphibolite slabs and the easy track up to the modest summit leads to some intricate and technical slabs and cracked grooves. An hour of rehabilitating wobbles on these slabs with friends spotting with big mats is the perfect antidote for stepping o...

A long, cold winter extended the bouldering season into a chilly spring lasting well into May. If there is still ski-ing into May, it means then there is still good bouldering to be had.

Latest update on Dumbarton and the clean-up in a fine piece of film by Chris Houston, capturing some of the problems as well  - post-graffiti...

Just to let everyone know that Historic Scotland, who own the boulders and crag at Dumbarton Rock, have agreed to clean the boulders of graffiti, overseen by climbers so no holds are damaged. After excellent concern for our sporting heritage and good consultancy (thanks to Ian Lambie of Historic Scotland and Andrea Partridge at the MCOS!), I'll be attending the first day of cleaning on Monday 11th March. I would like to ask climbers and boulderers to avoid climbing here in this period while the cleaning goes on, as for safety reasons parts of the crag and boulders will have to be cordoned off. I would ask all to respect the arrangements we've made on behalf of climbers, as much good work has gone on in the background to arrange the best form of cleaning and restoration. Unfortunately much of the 'historic' graffiti has vanished behind modern graffiti, so it's impossible to restore the lower 'layers' - it will all just have to come off. This is a good o...

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.