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Showing posts from February, 2007

Ullapool Bouldering

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Ian Taylor has produced an informative and accurate guide to the bouldering round Ullapool. It includes the classic areas such as Reiff, Reiff-in-the-Woods, Ardmair and Rhue, but also some more recent venues such as Cnoc Breac, Tigh-na-Mara, Ullapool Hill and the Goat Boulder. The area is almost exclusively Torridonian Sandstone, which is similar to but redder than gritstone, it's older and harder and isn't as green... so this is truly a gritstone climber's mecca. If you visit these areas you will also find as many projects and new rock as you could wish for. Ullapool is a fine base for exploring Torridon, Coigach, Assynt and the far northwest...the camping is good, the beer is good, and even if the midges are bad in summer, areas such as Reiff tend to catch the windiest, sunniest weather, so it's an all-year-round venue for the boulderer. To get hold of a copy, pop in to North West Outdoors in Ullapool (01854 613 383), at £8 (plus £1 p&p), or contact Ian at ullapoo

Dumbarton Spring 2007

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Sanction - Dave Macleod, BNI Boulder -Font 8b It's been an early start at Dumbarton and folk are making progress, I'm very close to bagging my long term nemesis that is Pongo SS, but the weather has turned wet again and this problem is a weeper - figuratively and literally... however, I heard that Malcolm Smith made the second ascent of Pressure while Dave MacLeod completed the roof section of his project on the BNI boulder - Sanction is the left side of the roof ( Sabotage the right) which is a hard Font 8b, the link-up through the Perfect Crime start will make it Dumby's hardest... Meanwhile, Alan Cassidy despatched King Kong - a frustrating Font 8a which is very easy to fail on at the last moves. 'Justice!' is Cassidy's comment on the whole affair! Michael Lee is also making progress on the Consolidated traverse, so we should watch for him eating through the grades... Michael Lee working the end of Consolidated On a weirder note, Dumbarton it seems is

Mission to succeed...

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Richie betts on The Mission - Torridon - pic by Ian Taylor Scottish bouldering news that has filtered through to me on the drip-feed...Richie Betts has been the most committed blocboy this month with the first ascent of the oft-spied project of the rippled wall on the Ship boulder, Torridon Campsite... he managed to find a sequence trending right on this very blank wall and thought it Font 7b+, probably worth V9 for the commitment to this far-flung corner of the bouldering pantheon. Here's the story: Just got back from Torridon where I managed to climb south face of the ship boulder via the slim groove on the right hand side. Ian pointed me at this a few weeks ago and it's a great line, visible from the road as you come down the Glen. It looks like it should be fairly easy as it contains the only real features/holds on the face, and these look massive compared to the blank wall to the left which is just covered in shallow ripples and pebbles. However...It ended up being much

Far away... close up

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What is it about some stones? They can look meaningless from a passing car window -you stop, pull the binoculars to the eyes just in case and they still look ignorable... a lot of boulders you walk into shrink to sad lumps like deflated footballs. However, I've long learnt to keep an open eye and mind...sometimes you are rewarded, the stones swell in size, you downsize next to them as though you stepped through a shrinking machine - I'm convinced there are cosmic wormholes next to some of these things! Point in case: I pulled up at some boulders I'd spied in the burnt tangled wreck of an old forestry plantation, convinced they weren't worth the effort and was pleasantly surprised to find one of them at least almost highball... with some super slab problems and a clean granite roof (with holds!) which proved to be a superb V6. It's been a good period for boulder hunting - tall blue skies and still cold days when you sweat into your boulder mat and your fingers enjoy

Klem Loskot visits Scotland

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Well, if you weren't there, you missed a treat... Klem Loskot came to Edinburgh on part of his UK tour and entertained us with a dry wit and some truly gob-smacking films and images of bouldering, deep-water soloing in Mallorca and Croatia, pipe-skiing in Salzburg, surfing and bouldering in the Seychelles, the landscapes and people of Hampi, Australia, South Africa... this man has travelled, hunting down a paradise of play and movement with an unstoppable conviction. His thought-provoking films, 'shot from the hip' with a tiny camera, were an the animal's eye POV of hard bouldering, extreme ski-ing and delightful surfing in perfect turquoise tubes. As for the bouldering: close-ups of hands dug into tiny holds, or wavering shots of dream-like dynos, twisting body-tension, full torque power and primal yells (the DWS full-body dyno in Mallorca, makes you swallow your own throat)... if you don't get to catch him, he does have an excellent book of his images and words, a

Sunshine and Stone

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Guess the glen... The boulderer's idyll... seems like a while since we've had it...a sustained high pressure has dried out some of this extended autumn wetness (winter?) and I found myself on the flank of a glen, arm up against the sun ricocheting off a pylon, boulder mat throwing me a wobbler as I balanced over a barb-wire fence, following the sheep trails again... absorbed in that out-of-breathness as I toiled through steep heather to a spied shadow of steepness. Distant ribbons of vanishing snow on the Tarmachans like a sketched-out caricature of mountains, everything back in its place and the climbing simple and coming easily with renewed motivation, the body twisting eagerly and the hands hungry for the emery-rub of garneted rock. My eyes are always close to my hands when bouldering and I notice the little blood-nicks on my knuckles that the schist steals off me... you clock these little things and welcome them back...it's what makes bouldering special and personal,