Pete Murray and myself travelled up to meet Dave MacLeod at his '8c' cave in Morar. This secretive and impressive venue took us a while to find, but was obvious once we did - a 50 degree walled quartzite cave with no moss or drips or lichen and a singular line of chalked holds disappearing into the triangular darkness - Dave's 8c project. I pulled on a few holds the first day and tried one or two moves, but the sheer brutality and power required was too much and we let Dave show us his rubric of moves and contortions that allow the cave to be climbed. The 'easiest' lines appear to be butch 7a's and the top level is close to Dave's idea of Nirvana - long power-plays and complex link-up sequences. We bagged some good film and a short interview about the place which will be forthcoming in a new short film from Pete Murray, to go along with a new collection of writing on bouldering from Stone Country.
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