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

Torridon the scenic way

This weekend  I had some big plans. On Friday I was going to try and have a big day on Ben Nevis linking up as many routes as I could and then on the weekend I was going to head to Torridon to meet the rest of the EUMC and climb something a bit harder. My plans were changed quickly on thursday evening after a quick chat with Lochaber SAIS forecaster Blair Fyffe who said the descent gullies were likely to be loaded with snow and avalanchy. A quick change of plans saw me acquiring a map of Skye for a shot at the Cuillin Ridge.
The Cuillin Ridge is probably Scotlands finest mountaineering excursion and usually take parties 3 days to complete. I chose to attempt it in a single push, and to assure this of happening I wasn't going to take any bivi gear.
At 2am I rocked up underneath the Cuillin. After packing my bag I set my alarm for 4am. I woke at 4 to the sound of rain on the roof of my car. I didn't want to get wet at the start of the day so I set my alarm for another hour of sleep. 5am came and the rain was still there. Did I read MWIS wrong? Im sure it said the weather was going to be good!
In the end I decided to sack it off. If its rain down here it will be falling as fresh snow at the top of the ridge which would make the going very hard. I decided a lie in and a drive was a better bet for the day, so I spent the rest of the day having a leisurely drive around the North West of Scotland and Skye. I made my way up to Torridon, via ex-EUMC member David Geddes house, and even managed to get a bit of work done that evening.
At about 12pm everyone else arrived. I went about finding Alex who I was going to climb with. During the day, seeing that everything was looking a bit wet, I had been formulating a plan. My plan was to consist of climbing 4 mountains in 1 day. The mountain of Beinn Dreag, Beinn Alagin and Liathach all have graded ridges on them. My idea was to climb each of these mountains and then finish by climbing the classic Fuselage Gully on Beinn Eighe. In the end I managed to drum up some more psyched students to come with me so the team consisted of Tom Fitzpatrick, Alex Toomey, Alex McMillan and Max Scherer. 

An early start!

We (maybe I) decided it was best to leave straight away as there was going to be a lot of walking to do. At 1.30 am we all left the car park after no sleep and started walking. At the Beinn Eighe turn off Max and Alex M left us to climb Fuselage Gully, so Alex T, Tom and I continued on our way to Beinn Dearg.
It was still very much night time so we couldn't really see where we were going and predictably we couldn't find out route. In the end we climbed some rotten gully to the top and after a short walk along the summit ridge descended the northern side of the mountain.

At the top(ish) of Beinn Dearg

Once back down in the valley, were we were greated my some rather nice Scottish scenery,  we contoured around to find Beinn Alligin. The weather wasn't anything as nice as predicted. This combined with a extreme lack of sleep saw us decide to bail on our plans. I told Tom and Alex they could head back to the campsite from here, as we were now quite close, and that I would go back and get the car.

On my way out I passed a party walking in and suddenly realised just how early it still was!  Shortly after this I saw some climbers heading up a gully towards the Liathach ridge, then checked my watch. 9.30 am! I cant go back now. I quickly weighed up my options and finally decided that I probably should actually go and climb something and headed up the ridge via Hidden Gully (II). The ridge itself was in great condition with some friendly snow. This allowed me to climb quite fast and overtake lots of team, including a group of EUMC members, which included Alex M and Max.

Assorted Yummicks on the Pinnacles

After finishing the ridge and retrieving my car I got some well earned rest, sleeping from about 4m till 8am sunday morning.
On Sunday I decided that driving home would be a silly thing to do and instead walked in to Beinn Eighe with the idea of climbing Fuselage Gully. As always plans change and a couple of hours later I found myself topping out on West Buttress (IV).

West Buttress Selfie

All in all that was quite a fun and tiring weekend, which was just what I needed before the next couple of weeks in the library to finish my dissertation!
I suspect not many will have read this far, so Hi Mum!
I will add some more pictures later.

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!