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Showing posts from February, 2013

Iron and Stone - The Ross of Mull

A week on the Ross of Mull. A high pressure settling over Scotland in February. Sunshine and pink granite... iron and stone. The week is a lesson in learning how not to shred yourself on large quartz and feldspar crystals, learning what can and cannot be climbed; the subtle differences between a blank wall and a smearable slab...  Danny's Wall Fionnphort If you turn left off the ferry at Craignure on Mull, you’re heading west along a gradually ageing sequence of geologies, through the tertiary gabbro lavas of Glen More to the earlier basal lavas at Pennyghael and the older still Caledonian schists of Bunessan and beyond. Then it all goes pink-panther and you hit a very old and colourful granite around 413 million years old, lavishly outcropping around the ferry port of Fionnphort, like so many bald monk-heads poking out of the machair and turf, occasionally sunburnt to a deeper red. Then it gets all historical on the ferry to Iona and its ancient Lewisian bedrock

Scottish Bouldering Update

As we move forward gathering the simply frightening amount of good bouldering in Scotland for the Atlas of Scottish Bouldering, it's worth looking through a few recent videos from those avid stone hunters on this Stone Country Vimeo group. Please feel free to follow and add anything... I thought some recent highlights would be the new Arrochar blocs (expect BIG LINES in 2013), such as the Flying Pancake, courtesy of Tom Charles-Edwards' vision, which to me looks like a doable version of Font's Carnage , almost verbatim... The Flying Pankcake from Timothy Cross on Vimeo . Also, Fiend's continuing tour of Scotland's best problems (and whiskies), such as Laggan 2, which Gaz Marshall has discovered, shows an awesome looking line in Gale Force: One of the best problems in the UK... from Fiend on Vimeo .