For some the purity of a bouldering line and the clean tight power of a short piece of rock motivates more than the sweaty walk-ins, hot belays and meandering thoughts of a mountain route... in this spirit, in the cool Font-like dappled shade of Dunkeld woods, Mike Lee worked out the high voltage positions of his project to give Electric Feel Font 7b+. It is an isolated problem, but maybe all the more focused and classic because of this. It's an attractive scooped wall with lightning bolt features just down the hill rightwards from Marjorie Razorblade buttress at NO 020 438. Well done to Mike for climbing such a tough line in the searing heat we've had the last few days - I can vouch that this is a class modern addition and probably the best boulder problem in the area.
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