Skip to main content

Trossachs Classic Problems

A number of new venues over the last few years has transformed the Trossachs from a traditional cragging backwater to a rediscovered gem of modern bouldering philosophy. The main areas are Loch Katrine, Stronachlachlar, Ben A'an and Ben Ledi.



LOCK STOCK AND BARREL V9 - Dave Macleod's testpiece on the Sebastopol boulder. This gut-buster sit starts under the blunt arete and hooks and slaps up to a desperate slap for the sloper on the original V2 problem of Sebastopol. The true cave start remains a big number.

BOOMER V1 - the excellent and remarkably easy dyno (if you commit!) on the Fence boulders at Stronachlachlar. From a handrail, wind up the spring and boom for the apex jug. Try not to let your feet helicopter you off, stamp your foot on the wall as soon as you can!


TOURIST TRAP V5 - Loch Katrine - From a sit start on this arete, gain a two-finger sloper with a long reach, then figure out the best body position to grab the lip holds. Traverse left to escape this trap!


WATERCOLOUR CHALLENGE V3 - Bob Ewen's excellent pocket problem on the well-hidden stream boulder at Loch Katrine. Snap up to the pocket, gain a side-pull and good footwork should lead you to a high ledge and direct finish.


NAVIGATOR V3 - Sebastopol Boulder, Loch Katrine. This sit-start on the main wall requires you to get into a deep Egyptian and poise before your slap to the sidepulls which leads into the right-hand groove of Sebastopol.

PALLBEARER V2 - The Ben Ledi boulders have lots of good highball problems. This one takes the south wall of the highest boulder and requires a long confident reach and strong left arm. The best problem here is actually Scott Muir's 'Dawn Wall' V3, the left hand-groove on the Sunstone, but I have no pics of that as yet.

STAND-UP COMEDIAN V5 - An esoteric gem on the Ben A'an boulders, this takes the sunny west wall of this boulder from a sit-start at the obvious ramp. A diversion right allows the lip to be regained and a frustrating slap up and right to improving holds is the crux.



JAWA TRAVERSE V3 - Loch Katrine - superb technical foot manoevres on the north wall of the Jawa boulder. Traverse the handrail from left to right, finish out right or by reaching up the original jawa to make it V4...


FIGHT CLUB V4 - Loch Katrine - the first boulder you come across on the south west shores of Loch Katrine, this obvious challenge climbs right from a jug through poor slopers to a hard pull over the bulge. Heels and cool conditions are your tag partners.



NAMELESS PIMP TOY V7 - Stronachlaachlar - the traverse of the Long Boulder at the foot of the forest above Loch Arklet. This combines the cruxes of three straight-ups, linking them togtether to create a sustained left to right traverse. Start at the left edge of the wee cave and finish far right at the juggy groove. The lip traverse on the boulder behind this one is Dave Redpath's excellent 'Virgin Suicides', about the same level of difficulty.

Popular posts from this blog

Vertical Landscapes: Exploring Glasgow's Hidden Bouldering

With the new guide to Glasgow Bouldering forthcoming, and with the last two years spent scouring our local landscapes for vertical diversion, many of us discovered a closer, more nuanced appreciation of climbing and how it helps maintain mental wellbeing as much as physical. The big mountains and wilderness landscapes were for the first time excluded from access and our pandemic taught us all to appreciate the landscapes on our doorstep. Even the urban world has its own small wildernesses and landscapes to immerse ourselves in for a while. For me, the daily walk in lockdown occasionally became a hunt for an esoteric piece of rock spied on the OS map or Google Earth. Rumours of boulders and mythologies of obscure rock were hunted down to help feed a hunger for the vertical. Even Dumbarton Rock was out of range, lying outside of the Glasgow City boundary. It's a venue which famously makes the blood run cold, with fiercely exposed overhanging routes, highball boulder problems and cl
Read more

The Lost Township of Grulin on Eigg

‘The Stony Place’ as it translates, the archaeological notes on the RCAHMS database for Eigg, state baldly the lost humanity of Grulin as early as an 1880 OS survey map: ‘…eighteen unroofed buildings, six enclosures and a field-system’. Now a scheduled monument and memorialised as a ‘depopulated settlement’, though it is not obvious if the verb is passive or aggressive, Grulin Uachdrach (Grulin Upper) is, like Hallaig on Raasay, a place of violent silence and resonance. Who lived here and why was the site abandoned? If it were not in Scotland, suspicions might fall to the climate, remoteness and apparent unsustainability of the stony place, a rabble of large rocks under the steep slopes of An Sgurr, but the carefully constructed walls tell us it was once a thriving township – the kilns, folds and blackhouse walls integrated with the giant boulders such as Clach Hosdail. In 1853 the whole of the village of Grulin, both upper and lower, housed fourteen families who were forced to l
Read more

Loch Lomond excursions

Climbing is deeply reassuring. Which seems odd to say, at first. There is so much anxiety around the climb, attached to anticipation, also to 'failure' and return, but when you are in the well, actually climbing, everything is as it should be – balanced. Climbing: it's not about imposing a sequence on the rock, more about accepting what choreography the rock will allow you, what it will release. It has to be studied in detail, with the body, not just the eye. Brushing and touching rock is the opening of the inner lens. The skin of the stone speaks with a deeper well of gravity and a resonance which can be felt only by touching the stone, gripping its friction, pulling into gravity's clasp and feeling that transmission of core and shaped mass. Shaped by pressure, wind, water, ice, the stone dictates its own movements from its own life. So when we boulder we are tracing something ancient rather than living any statement of the moment. Like following an invisible line or l
Read more