Stone Country – Landscapes and Lifescapes

What is the future of climbing topos and guides? It's a question which has been evolving rapidly in the last decade as we get more and more used to accessing data online, or viewing topos on our phones or tablets. Guidebooks, like vinyl records, are collectable objects and still useful and resilient formats for getting the beta you need.The Youtube/Vimeo revolution has changed bouldering beta for good and a realtime topo might include a video, a description, and, perhaps now a 3D model of the boulder. In collaboration with the Glasgow-based ACCORD project, we've been exploring the conceptual and practical challenges (and the usefulness) of exploring our sporting heritage in a 3D-modelling project. This has involved collaborative approaches to record the climbing and geology at Dumbarton Rock. The history of climbing at Dumbarton is now rich enough, and has built up enough generational layers of development, that a statement of intent has to be made in terms of voicing ou...

  First of all, having a couple of 'refreshing pints' in the Strontian Inn was a bad idea . . . the hottest day of the year at the fag-end of July, the tarmac bubbling, it seemed wise at the time. The Bealach Feith Nan Laogh could wait a bit. I checked the specs of the climb, which seemed less electrically-shocking at a pub picnic table in the sun: 2.6 km with an average gradient of 11.8% . . .  steep, but no killer, I reasoned. Something at the back of my head crawled and writhed, trying to fathom what higher gradient would average it to 11.8! I clipped into the bike and set off, my mind a fuzzy blank of summer bliss. Turning north off the main road at Strontian towards innocuous-looking hills, the wooded first few kilometres are flat and surfaced with new rolling tarmac, I was in a pleasant dream of cycling paradise, spinning without a chain, listening to birdsong, still on the big ring. A small sign turned me left up a short wooded hill towards 'Pollochro ...

Scottish Natural Heritage has published its 2014 map of Wild Land Areas of Scotland - designated areas of coast, upland and undeveloped land - or 'wilderness' - which should be considered inviolate. Some of the areas are notably under protection via bodies such as National Parks, the John Muir Trust, or the National Trust and other private bodies, but the worrying note is that since the draft map was published in 2013, 0.8% of wild land has been developed (20.3% down to 19.5%). If it continued at that rate we'd have no wild land left by 2039 . . . The conclusions of the report and mapping were as follows: The concepts of wildness and safeguarding of wild land enjoy strong support from the public and many stakeholders in Scotland. Areas of wild land are widely acknowledged as important assets, providing a number of significant ecosystem services that support a range of social and economic benefits and outcomes.  Despite the inherent subjectivity of the concept, t...

Well, it's done! The Eagle Bloc scanned for full photogrammetry 3D, the crag laser-scanned, some RTI-based imagery of the graffiti and carvings and the Pongo face 3D'd as well. We'll post the results shortly once I figure out the plug-ins for the 3D modelling, but it was an impressive process and my thanks go out to the ACCORD project which initiated this digital heritage of Dumby climbing. We'll archive all the results. Thanks to all who turned up to help: Sven, Alex, John, Eddie and Frank in particular, there was some good storytelling at the Focus group sessions and the weather was terrific throughout to allow for those hundreds of photographs!  The ACCORD group led by Alex Hale, Mhairi Maxwell and Sian Jones  Alex and Sven doing some photogrammetry work on a pole Kevin ignoring us and doing some climbing...the reason for the project

I have been going on for years about Dumbarton Rock being one of our finest examples of modern 'sporting heritage', a kind of living history and an example of community 'ownership' (I use this in the least possessive sense) through simple occupation and use, under the shadow of more static heritage that is purely conservatory (I mean no disrespect to Historic Scotland and the castle!). It's how we create identity after all and is part of the greater weave of history, but seen from the ground-up and the everyday, which is an approach that is gradually displacing the top-down perspective of traditional historiography. One of the most exciting projects around is a community-history project with the acronym ACCORD, which stands for Archaeology Community Co-Production of Research Data. What does this mean? Well, for climbers, it means we are gathering a group in early July to photograph the boulders and maybe the crag, with loaned equipment and cameras, to create...

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...

A long winter and finally my favourite local venue is dry...