Stone Country – Landscapes and Lifescapes

The first snows on the southern highlands now have a wider vista behind the the slow dismantling of the old distillery, like time being reversed. All the bricks being removed, taken away, turned back into dust and clay, buried back in the earth... and still we return to Dumbarton, dismantling the old, forging the new. Winter has come early this November... it's bouldering weather - time to get on the slopers you couldn't hang in summer, time to enjoy the brief thrill of rubber biting into smooth basalt, sticking and allowing the torque to be applied... letting the power surge smoothly without the clutch slipping. Dave MacLeod is very close to the roof link-up under Gorilla , saying he feels way stronger than last year (!) - the body tension in him is locked taut as an Erskine bridge cable, which is the least required to maintain the rigid architecture between fingers and heels. Dave MacLeod working 'Pressure' Someone took a chainsaw to the old 2HB sycamore, a rather ra...

Sounds like a bad thriller, jets screaming overhead, somewhere in Scotland, someone on the run across the heather, pursued by guns and dogs, hiding behind boulders... Ian Taylor had seen them as well, glacial drift and erratics all over the place, in dumpy moraine hillocks and drumlins. Once or twice I almost ended up in Black Bridge craning my neck out the side-window. Then one day I stopped, put the wellies on and went to satisfy the rock-thirst again. Situated between Garve and Ullapool, these boulders are mostly hidden from view, but a litter of small ones by 'Lubfearn' (the alder loop), under the choked throat of Altguish, were recently attended to by myself and Ian Taylor. Here's what Ian found as description for the area: 'originally a porphyritic granite with abundant orthoclase phenocrysts, but is now a coarse biotite-granite gneiss in which the phenocrysts are largely deformed to augen wrapped round by a steaked out matrix of quartz, biotite, potash felspar...

Shape and movement moulded into one! Okay, it's not Scotland, but while storms rattled chimneys in the far North West, a late autumn sun skidded low over the post-harvest Cheviots and if the Tweed had deigned to meander further south, we'd have a mini-Fontainebleau in Scotland. But the Dovehole boulders rightly remain part of 'the coonty'. Just past Coldstream, the road bends sharply through Milfield and a forest break on the east flanks of these gentle hills reveals a nest of sandstone sculptures... a perfect haven for an autumn afternoon, my only company a few pheasants ratcheting off over the stubble like clockwork-sprung toys. Some spots are perfect microcosms of movement. The wind-imagined shapes of these sandstone stumps rise like remembered dunes from an ancient land, their original domes and rope-twists smoothed out into half-seen shapes and mythical softness. The movement is quick like half-remembered dreams, you flow through the easy meditations on generous po...

Storm Boulder Cubby has reported his problems on the Etive boulders at www.cubbyimages.com and I paid a visit on a squally day in the mid-autumn westerlies. I stuck the wellies on and stomped along the boggy path in driving rain until it became obvious the shoreline was the better approach. The rain passed and the sun came out, the first two boulders nestling like gleaming dinosaur eggs on the brink of the loch. The problems require sit starts, with the traverses being the classic lines. Micron 2000 Boulder - Jo George, courtesy of www.cubbyimages.com Between Heaven and Hel l is a desperate traverse clockwise from the west slab lip round the boulder, I was glad it was soaked in a way, but a fresh wind and sun dried it off instantly, so I decided to come back to it... Cubby rates it as an absolute cracker, and a hard Font 7b, that's about V8 in modern currency. Silver Surfer is an excellent rockover problem on this boulder. For more info, see Cubby's site. A further 10 min...

Guy Robertson on 'The Aberdonian' V8 ss Portlethen. On the main area, Tim Rankin added a hard sit start called The Aberdonian , which he says is an unmissable problem if you’re climbing to that level and in the area. The stand-up is easier, but also classic status amongst the problems here. John Watson added a link-up on the Bad Buoy - start up the Bad Buoy sit start to the break, traverse right to a crux cut-loose and desperate little nubbin sloper to rock up the flake problem above the mezzanine. Glasgow Bhoy V6 pic... Tim Rankin has further devloped the harbour area, mainly round the big stone of the Bad Buoy Boulder and Dave’s Roof across the wee bay. Hopefully we’ll see a complete topo for Portlethen in the near future, as it now has hundreds of excellent gems. The best problems are Pete’S Lip - the full lip traverse of the boulder skipping over to the smaller boulder to finish along that; the seaward arete of Moon Lightning and the steep central wall from a sit s...

Acapulco E3 5c Acapulco Zawn - a wild traipse over a storm-smoothed wall, moving boldly between thin breaks until forced out over the sea... this photo was taken in 1999, I believe. A perfect sea-cliff route.

Bouldering out of a blow-hole on a wave-cut platform, up stepped overhangs, the crux of this was maintaining body tension and hanging the slopers long enough to reach a three-finger crimp and wind-eroded jugs in the seams of schist above... I spent a good hour trying to find the balance and still my body enough to keep the hand on that left sloper... too much momentum meant falling over, too little power meant a slip back into your own gravity: a bit like the balance in surfing a wave - rock is a static wave that has to be surfed upwards with the same attention to balance and control.