A Scottish Bouldering Odyssey

Over the past couple of weeks I have been driving around Scotland exploring and climbing on lots of boulders and short outcrops. I would have liked to have split this post up into 3 separate ones but with a trip to the islands looming over me I have tried to do it all in one big abridged post with lots of pictures.

All of these trips have been inspired by the Bouldering in Scotland guide, published by Stone Country. Stone Country produce a nice selection of guide books for Scottish bouldering and also have an interesting blog.
Scotland features lots of interesting rock types, which allows for lots of different styles of climbing in a small area. If your a crimp fan then the schist found at Weem or Glen Nevis might be more to your taste than the rough slopers, typical of Skyes's Gabbro. I personally have tried to just climb on as many things as I can. Glen Clova and Inchbae, both with a granitic composition, although neither strictly being granite, have been highlights of the trip. I liked the solitude which can be found at Inchbae, despite being so close to a major road, coupled with some brilliant climbing on lovely blocs. Some of these can be quite dirty but once uncovered the climbing is generally very good. If your ever driving between Ullapool and Inverness then stop off and seek out some of the problems here. My personal favorite was "Long Winning Streak" on the double boulders, however everything described in the guide is worth doing.

Long Winning Streak, Inchbae

Colonel Mustard, Inchbae

West Wall, Glen Clova

Glen Clova is another good venue to visit. It is less on the way somewhere than Inchbae, but it does have a lot more to go at making it worth a special visit. There is a good guide on the Scottish Climbs Wiki, which features lots of good problems. There is a lot of potential for new routing here too. My favorite climb here would have to be Lady Sam, a brilliant font 7a+ in "The Hollow" area below the sentinel boulder.

Lady Sam, Glen Clova

Climbing out of the Darkness of the Hole of Weems, Glen Clova

Torridon is a particularly popular bouldering venue for the highlands and even has its own guide book produced by Stone Country. I have visited the boulders in Torridon on other occasions but I have just gone to the classics of the Celtic Jumble and the Ship Boulder. This time however I decided to have a look at one of the outlying boulders close to Annat. The Balgy boulder is a Torridonian sandstone Erratic sat upon a Gneiss platform. The guide describes two problems, one of them the brilliant font 7a The Balgy Prow. If you attempt this problem then try and stay as true to the line of the prow as you can. It is easy to escape out left after a few tricky moves, and I guess you will have climbed the line, but with a bit of work the direct line up the prow becomes possible. You might loose a lot of skin, but it is totally worth it!

The Balgy Boulder, Torridon

Other very good venues include the Gneiss boulders found at Loch Buie on Mull, the Torridonian Sandstone boulders of Loch Kishorn and Reiff and The Gabbro boulders in Coire Lagan, which are totally worth the walk!, and of course the classics such as Dumbarton and Glen Nevis! Ill let the pictures speak for the rest of these though.

Lucky Break, Coire Laggan

Snake Attack, Coire Lagan

Hook and Go, Loch Buie

Nipple Attack, Loch Buie

Dannys Wall, Loch Buie

Dannys Wall, Loch Buie

The problem with summer scottish bouldering

A Busy 2014

So I have been sort of neglecting my blog recently but this has mostly been due to me being really busy!

Kandersteg

I have loads to tell you about, but I will be brief to avoid making it into too much of an essay.

Team GB in Romania

During January I competed in the Ice World Cup in Korea, Romania and Switzerland. Despite me never challenging the top climbers at all I have learnt loads, had so much fun and made loads of new friends.On my travels I have also been to some cool mixed climbing crags. We were shown a newly bolted crag in Romania and then went to Kandersteg whilst in Switzerland.

Saas Fee Structure

Saas Fee Qualifiers (Photo Credit: Matt Pritchard)

Romanian Qualifiers (Photo Credit: Anna Wells)

My best performance was in Korea where I just went out there and climbed as I didn't have a clue how I was going to do. Hopefully next year I will be selected for the team again and I can do a bit better!
After returning from Switzerland I went straight to the BMC international meet. This was a week were UK hosts, of which I was one, showed loads of foreign climbers around the winter scottish highlands. I didn't really get very much done as I missed the best days to go to university but I did manage to climb The Seam, Unicorn, a new route in the Cairngorms, DTS Spirit and Fast and Furious in my wellies (well I took a victory whipper from the final hold on this).

The Seam (Photo Credit: Piotr Sulowski)

Unicorn (Photo Credit: Piotr Sulowski)

Unicorn (Photo Credit: Piotr Sulowski)

F+F (Photo Credit: Piotr Sulowski)

Since the meet I have managed one day out on Ben Nevis where I climbed Route 1 with its Direct Winter start.

Route 1 Direct Start

In addition to my ice axe related adventures I came joint first, with a very strong boulderer, in the Edinburgh Universities bouldering competition last week held at the CSE climbing wall. I was quite surprised at this since I haven't rock climbed very much at all in the last month or so.

Competing at the CSE (Photo Credit: Steven Barnes)

Road Trip 2013

Sunset at Reiff

At the top of Blankist, Arran

Since the18th May I have managed to pack in loads of climbing. I have ticked a total of 123 routes and boulder problems and only had 2 days without climbing anything outdoors, although one of these days I went to Red Goat climbing wall in York. It is needless to say that I don't have much skin left. I have been to nearly 30 different crags in this time too. It would be a very long blog post if I described everything I did, so here is a summary.
The interesting part of my recent climbing, and the posts name, starts on the 25th May. Here I set off road tripping with Matt Harle and Sophia Borgeest. Our desitnation for the evening was Arran but we decided to stop off at Dumbarton rock on the way past. After Dumbarton, and on the way to Arran, we climbed on a cool little erratic boulder in the corner of a field called the Clochoderick Stone. Arran saw me head off on a solo trip up to the Rosa Slabs where I climbed Blank (VS) and Blankist (HVS). The plan after Arran was to road trip for a while, with Anne Peale as well, but unfortunately the weather wasn't looking very good up north, so we went to the county. Kyloe In seemed like the best bet and we had a nice day climbing around the steep crimpy sandstone walls. Matt and Sophia had to be in Edinburgh on Wednesday so Anne and I set off up North together. We were headed for Reiff but stopped off at Creag Dubh on the way past and climbed a nice HVS called Inbred. At Reiff we met up with some others from Edinburgh Uni.

Scooped Wall Traverse, Reiff in the Woods (Photo Credit: Anne Peale)

On Wednesday John De Lyser, Alistair Rocke, Katie Main, Anne Peale and I made the long walk into the leaning block cliff at the North of the peninsula. Here I onsighted The Quickening (E5) and Freedom (E4), among others. They both felt very easy, so I may have been having a good day. The Quickening is my first E5 onsight, and first E5 clean (I don't think I have even top roped one). It takes a traversing line of massive buckets with good foot holds along a steep face and onto a slab. The next day we all went to the seal song area at Reiff. I managed to climb the route Seal Song (E3) which gives the area its name. I thought this felt much harder than The Quickening. On Friday Anne and I went out East in preparation for the EUMC's Dinner Meet in Dornoch on Saturday. We went to Cummingston and Huntleys Cave.

The Quickening, Reiff (Photo Credit: Anne Peale)

Seal Song, Reiff (Photo Credit: Anne Peale)

On Sunday Matt Harle, Sophia Borgeest, Anne Peale and I went to Sheigra to climb its famous steep sea cliffs. On Monday, after a morning at Sheigra we made our way south, climbing at Ardmair Crag on the way past. We spent that evening in Gairloch, climbing at Aztec Tower and Grass Crag the day after. The rest of the week was spent in Torridon, although I made a short trip to Helmsdale to do some work.

Bloodlust Direct, Sheigra (Photo Credit: Matt Harle)

Western Skyline, Ardmair

This trip has not only taken me around a large number of amazing locations, and featured some amazing sunsets, but the geology has also been very interesting. I have climbed rocks from the Dalradian, Lewisian, Torridonian and the Cambro-Ordovician within the past 11 days. Im not sure if I climbed on anything that was from the Moines though. This is possibly the best way to cement my knowledge of Scottish stratigraphy possible. I have even climbed within all the terranes of the Lewisian, those being; Richonoich, Assynt, Gruinard and Southern.
I'm having a rest for a few days now before I head to Pabbay on Wednesday!

Northumberland Wall, Diabaig (Photo Credit: Anne Peale)

Here is a summary ticklist:
E5: The Quickening, Reiff (o/s)
E4: Western Skyline, Ardmair (o/s)
Unleash the Beast, Ardmair (o/s) (2nd)
Freedom, Reiff (o/s)
E3: Brave Heart, Reiff (o/s)
Seal Song, Reiff (o/s)
E2: Cross Eyed, Reiff (o/s)
Huntleys Jame, Huntleys Cave (o/s)
Pete's Wall, Huntleys Cave (o/s)
Bloodlust Direct, Sheigra (o/s)
Wanderings, Sheigra (o/s)
Northumberland Wall, Diabaig (o/s)
The Pillar, Diabaig (o/s)
Colours Fly, Limekilns (o/s)

Font 7a: Problem 37, Edlingham (o/s)
The Groove, Caley
Fony 6c+: Haven, Reiff in the woods

Malcs Arete, Torridon

Font 6c: The Prow, Hepburn
The Wall, Hepburn (o/s)
Jocks and Geordies, Kyloe In
Avoiding the Main Issue, Reiff in the woods (o/s)

F 7a: Like It Hot, Grass Crag (o/s)
F 6c: The Dump, Grass Crag (o/s)
All The Arts, Grass Crag (o/s)

Like it Hot, Problem 37 and The Quickening are all personal best onsights for me!

Skye and the North West

Joanna and I decided to drive up North on Thursday night thanks to a favorable weather report. We drove to Cairngorm mountain where we stayed for the night. The plan was to climb Crystal Ridge but the weather on Cairngorm wasn't great so we drove further North to Huntly's Cave, near Grantown on Spey. Huntley's cave is a small Mica Schist crag which is improbably steep at the grade. I imagine the mica schist, which is a metamorphic rock, would have in a metamorphic aureole around the igneous intrusion of the Cairngorms, although I haven't checked this. Here we climbed a nice multi-pitch route called Diagonal (VS 4c), Central Crack (HS 4b), Cave Direct (VS 4c) and Double Overhang (HVS 5a). Double Overhang takes a corner crack which passes through two overhangs, and looks much harder than it turns out to be.

Double Overhang (Photo Credit: Joanna Lisowiec)

That evening we drove to Skye. There was lots of very low cloud when in the Great Glen but this lifted as we approached the coast. Skye was cloudless and dry. There was even a little bit of wind to blow the midges away, so it was almost perfect. The EUMC meet to Skye was this weekend too so we drove around campsites trying to find them. We failed in finding them but we did join a beach party in Glen Brittle which had a fire and bag pipes and everything. Later on in the evening we drove to Neist and camped next to the road. We got a leisurely start the next day and arrived at the car park at Neist point at about 10am. Neist Point is a series of impressive sea cliffs, which are over looked by a light house. We climbed at the Financial Sector, which is above a raised beach. The routes here require a 30m abseil to get to the bottom of them. We only climbed two routes, both of which I lead, which where Security Risk (E1 5b) and Venture Capital (HVS 5a). Venture Capital takes a line up two parallel cracks which end in a small roof and Security Risk takes a very crimpy line up a groove, which is harder than it looks.The rock here was Gabbro, which is a very coarse grained plutonic rock. This combined with the relative remoteness of the crag, so it didn't get much traffic, meant that the friction here was amazing.

Security Risk (Photo Credit: Joanna Lisowiec)

We had big plans for Sunday so we decided to move on to Elgol, which is another sea cliff but at the other end of the island. Elgol, unlike Neist, is composed of Jurassic Sandstone, which is much softer. This produced lots of interesting flaky features but made everything seem a little less solid than Neist. To add to this the rock is covered in a sort of grassy sea lichen. This lichen gave the name to the first route I did, which was called Hairy Mary (VS 4c). This route takes a series of crack up a steep wall of rock. Whilst at the crag we found the rest of the EUMC group, so we took Catherine Marsh along for the climb aswell.
There was enough time for another route so as Joanna's route was taken I decided to climb Veritas Splendour (E3 5c), which takes a steep roof around an arete and then after a short way up the left wall off the arete you swing back round onto the right wall and to the top. Liam Ingram had done it earlier in the day and he told me what to expect on it, which apparently wasn't too much difficulty. I found the steep bit not too difficult, except a long move into a crack around the arete. The hardest part for me, or at least the scariest was the top of the arete, which featured an insecure move, all be it to a massive jug.

Hairy Mary (Photo Credit: Joanna Lisowiec)

Veritas Splendour (Photo Credit: Joanna Lisowiec)

That evening, after dropping Liam Ingram and Catrin Nichols off at their campsite, Joanna and I drove to Reiff, which is another sea cliff North of Ullapool. Reiff is composed of Old Red Sandstone. Whilst stood at the bottom of the crag I could see features such as turbidites which suggested the rock was deposited at the bottom of an ocean.
Joanna had the first lead today and climbed Jim Nastic (VS 4c). After this I led Clam Jam (E1 5b) and Bank of Scotland (E3 5c). Afterwards I also soloed a number of HVS's. We were quite tired from our trip by now and decided to head back to Edinburgh, as the weather wasn't looking quite so good for tomorrow.

Reiff

 I'm sorry this is so long but we did do quite a lot!