Stone Country

Adventure Bouldering - pic Lee Robinson As the festive season kicks in and the year ends, we all turn to lists for next year, but what of the year that's gone? What were the top ten Scottish boulder problems? I'm not elitist, but I do like a strong line and a good story to a problem, so here's my attempt at the most exciting top Scottish bouldering problems of the year! Apologies to those not included or those classics excluded - this is just a wee list trying to represent a geographical whistle-stop tour of Bonny Blocland! Counting down as is traditional: 10. The perfect example of the 'community' nature of bouldering is this particualr problem - a hybrid of two hard previous problems by Tim Rankin, linked into the natural 'hardest line' ideal which leads all us boulderers astray! Seeking the boundaries of the climbable is what it's all about, it wouldn't be as much fun if no-one had gone before and we had nothing to 'stretch'. This contin

I'll be uploading some new topos to Stone Country soon, but as a Christmas Scottish bouldering offer, we are selling Bouldering in Scotland, Stone Play and Elelments the DVD at only £40.00, check the sidebar on the right if you want to take advantage. It's been a good autumn and early winter season for folks out bouldering, I'll put a report up soon of what's been done, in the meantime I'll get on with going square-eyed over fonts and upload those topos. Santa Claus goes bouldering (aka Bernd Zangerl )

Due to technical issues the boulderscotland.com website has been taken down and will not be up till next year, so anyone wanting to get hold of the new Dumbarton Bloc guide, can do so here through the blog (on the sidebar) or on the Stone Country main site. It's a nominal price of £2.50 for a download, which allows you to print the 12 page booklet at will and leave in the rain or tear up in frustration! Also of interest to you greener boulderers, we will be having a Stone Country Dumbarton clean-up, provisionally Saturday 14th February. Put the day in your diaries and come along, we'll provide gloves and bin-bags, you'll be alotted a corner of a boulder and by the end of the day we should have a cleaner playground. I'll try and organise a little competition as well maybe, might be good fun. Get back to me if you want to help out on the day with the clean-up and I'll be in touch: boulderscotland@gmail.com We'll be doing a round-up of autumn bouldering so please s

I thought I knew the forest and decided to produce a guidebook. Now, there are a few infinite numbers in maths, such as the Golden Ratio, or the elegant vanishing point of Pi, which suggest we cannot map the world without a formula that summarises our human limitations. My formula was to be that guidebook, the key to a forest's secrets. The forest of Fontainebleau is to me one such infinity, and my brief years of wandering the forest and bouldering on its rocks has only brought me closer to a love of the infinite and the endless adventure of climbing, whereas when I started out I thought there might be a revelatory summit to all this climbing - some, well, point to it all. There wasn't and there isn't, but something of the code was understood. I had grand ambitions when I first came to Fontainebleau, but it decided to rain on us for a week, so we walked around a lot, boggling at the maze of boulders and trying to find famous problems such as Carnage , Sur-pri

The Hotaches Committed series of films are now a raptly anticipated event in the climbing calendar year, and this new film, featuring five 'incredible climbing stories' is the best yet. The quality of production is superb and the film stories are future treasures of climbing documentary. They followed some high level traditional UK climbers throughout the year and the viewer is treated to an armchair sauna of the fear, trauma and elusive elation of high-end climbing. The choice of stories is apt and varied. The first story begins with the thoughtful James Pearson attempting the 'last great problem' of The Groove at Cratcliffe Tor. This blank groove between two gritstone breaks was always deemed unclimbable but this did not deter James, he is filmed clutching a pebble the size of a peanut, rapt and intent... so this first film leads us gently into the microscopic obsession and invisible geometry of a climbing magician. The bizarre sequence of moves that James finall

At last! The Stone Country Guidebook to ESSENTIAL FONTAINEBLEAU is now available! The main issue with publishing a guide to the best 350 problems in the forest was actually identifying them. They had to be varied, they had to exhibit character and they had to be good! I enlisted Colin Lambton as editor... with over 20 years of experience, he knew precisely what to put in and what to leave out, though we did have some mighty editorial arguments. J A Martin was the venue that caused us to come to verbal blows again and again, and Rocher Guichot was finally given a page as I caved to the blackmail of a free pint of beer. Colin I think has done a super job in selecting and balancing the guide and deserves all my thanks for trying to keep the guide on the straight and narrow. Colin Lampton on an early ascent of 'Bivouac' at Cuvier The point was to create a guide mainly for the first-timer which did not confuse and offered a n entry-level to the complexity of Font bouldering, both th

Balloons over the Forest at sunset Originally uploaded by Stone Country Press Having sprained a foot on the second day of a trip to Fontainebleau, it was time to be philosophical and sit atop a few viewpoint boulders. Sometimes this is not a bad thing and allows you to absorb the spirit of the forest and let a little serendipity creep in when otherwise you would be obsessed with brushing the excess chalk off the microscopic fantasia that is bouldering! Atop a boulder at Gorges aux Chats, I was pleasantly surprised by the sight of two hot-air balloons rising over the sunset canopy like contented thought bubbles. They drifted off over the woodsmoke inversion of the dusky sunset and vanished into a distant field. With the multi-coloured autumn leaves raining down over the grey rocks, it was simply the best place to be and the right moment. Just like the first morning setting out under a cool blue sky and crisp air to the ochre rocks of Potala... 'it doesn't get better than this

This is an exceptional film about the bizarre relationship between mountains, humans and risk. No matter that it features probably the most serious high-end route on the planet, Dave and Claire MacLeod have created a unique vision of obsession, determination and stress. 'Echo Wall' captures all the emotional trauma of climbing at the limit in a situation where failure is unacceptable. As an independent team, Claire and Dave have obviously worked really hard to bring this film together and they succeed in showing some of the sacrifice and pain of climbing what is effectively E12 on the most inhospitable mountain in Britain. 'The Ben' is not always inhospitable and the film opens with some fine time-lapse images of clouds clearing and alpen-glow washing down the peppered eminence of The Comb high in Coire na Ciste. Some helicopter shots give us the right impression that the north face of this mountain is something truly alpine and alien to the lush land 4000 feet below.

Here's a sample video from Pete Murray's upcoming film on Scottish bouldering, as Malc Smith talks us through 'Gutbuster' Font 8b+ at Dumbarton Rock: There will be a HI Res version on the Stone Country downloads page in the next few days, as well as samples from the forthcoming Dumby guide.

The new pocket guide to Fontainebleau is almost here! The pocket book is full colour with maps, approach notes, photo-topos of over 350 problems and key secrets to solving the problems. It has been designed to give new visitors to the forest an introduction to the art of bouldering in Fontainebleau, or it can be used by the experienced as a lifetime ticklist of the most-wanted! The chosen problems (it was a difficult editing process!) range from 2+ problems through to 8a, but most are in the 6a-7b range and accessible to the on-sighting boulderer (if you are lucky and talented, being plain strong doesn't always help!). The guide will be available late October or early November and as a special offer to those who check into this blog, I'm selling two copies of the new guide with a free copy of Pete Murray's Elements DVD for only 20.00. As the guide retails for 9.99, that's a saving of 15 quid! Plus you get a spare copy of the new Font guide or a DVD to give as a Christ

Gut Buster 8b+ (note protection!) Malc Smith has just climbed the hardest problem in Scotland to date, aptly named Gutbuster and more akin to hard power-yoga without the ground as support! It's a truly sapping excursion through the upside-down caves at Dumbarton Rock and the first problem to break into Font 8b+ territory. It anticipates the imminent arrival of the magical 8c grade as Malc already has spied another link-up that may not survive much longer. After a long time sitting in the dank BNI through-cave in mild autumn weather, Malc took advantage of a cold and breezy day on 27th September to bite into the angular basalt and complete the problem. It is an inspiring natural challenge to any highend boulderer, logically linking his own Serum of Sisypus 8a+ through the crux cave sequences of Perfect Crime and up the 8b of Sanction which Dave MacLeod did in 2007. With MacLeod beavering on a possible contender for hardest Scottish problem in Glen Nevis, it was left to Malc t

The far northwest coast north of Aberdeen was always a bit of a blind spot when we did the guide, not much had been developed or found there at all. However, things appear to be changing and after a tip-off from Chris Fryer, Russell Birkett developed the steep wall at the Buchan Ness lighthouse, a full topo is available here . Neptune's Kiss looks like a local classic! Buchan Ness - Neptune's Kiss Font 6c For stamina freaks and sport climbers looking for training problems, look no further than the classic traverse at Boltsheugh, Newtonhill, Aberdeen. Guy Robertson managed to eliminate as many jugs as he could and ended up with the Newtonhill Powerband , a staggering F8a+ traverse. Newtonhill Powerband, F8a+, Guy Robertson Guy reports: Wilson ’s (Moir) low level traverse without any of the jugs / resting holdz. Probably F8a+, whatever that translates to in bouldering money (don’t ask me!). It’s a pretty cool prob, and to my mind cleans up all the many variations on variat

Ajare E6 Niall McNair We are currently seeking photography for the next exciting project from Stone Country Press – Big Stone Country – A Selection of Scottish Mountain Climbs (draft title). Unlike the previous (bouldering) guides, this book is intended for much wider consumption; it will be structured around the great Scottish mountain crags, featuring both summer and winter climbs. Guy Robertson will be the editor in chief. The core purpose of the book is to profile Scotland 's best mountain crags and inspire people to climb in the hills, keeping the focus primarily (but not exclusively) on more recent historical developments and routes. We’re aiming for the ‘contemporary traditionalist’, and hope to both challenge and inspire. If you would like to contribute photography, or you have a photograph of a classic Scottish modern extreme or winter route over Grade 5, please submit a jpeg or two to Guy or myself . All photography will be remunerated, or if you

Kite Flying at Sheigra The older I get the more the 'things to do' list gets bigger, not smaller. When you're a young climber, you think you have all the time in the world, every route will get done and this list will just get smaller, but in the end there will just be more climbing out there than when you began this vertical game. It sounds contradictory but it's true, and with too much work on my hands and too many sacrifices made to bouldering, I felt I needed to attend to this list and get back into the 'management game' that is trad climbing. Conscious of ticking time and this withering rule of climbing physics that routes are only done in the present, I phoned the ever-reliable and super-keen 'Crofton' who had a week off between doctoring jobs. We trawled the forecast online and on Tuesday night

Dominic Ward and Lee Robinson have been busy exploring the remoter possibilities of bouldering in Applecross & Torridon and they sent me some topos of new bouldering for the Stone Country Bloc-Sport Guide for the NW. There seems to be no shortage of potential and the recent good weather allowed bikini-clad walk-ins (for Lee and Lisa anyway), who found billions of boulders under the Horns of Alligin it seems... an impressive field, makes me think of that scene in the Matrix when Neo is shown the billions of cloned humans! Nic Ward followed the attractive siren calls of the boulder field visible below the Bealach na Ba mast in Coire nan Cuileag and found the gem that is the 'Sanctuary' boulder, a good looking roof offering a little shade for tired and thirsty dogs as well as boulderers! GR - 777 428 The boulder is NW facing, and is visible from the Applecross side of the Bealach, on the way up to the mast car park. It lies below the mast in the field of vision marking the SW