It's an elusive juice - sporting inspiration. Athletes talk of 'form' and how difficult it is to peak to their optimum performance, as well as the mental glass ceilings they need to break through to achieve these goals. It's a lonely affair too. In the dark Scottish months when it's hard to feel motivated, some stories just show what's possible and perhaps how weak most of us are at forcing the issue (why we're happy to be bumblers!). Dave MacLeod has always inspired me, not because he is the 'strongest' climber or sends the hardest lines (he freely admits he isn't and doesn't). After a long recovery from a shoulder injury, he has just climbed Catalán Witness the Fitness which has to rank as one of the most intricate (and powerful) problems in Europe. Dave is used to roofs - he cut his teeth at Dumbarton on the likes of Pressure, and more recently the long roof problems at Arisaig Cave such as 4th Wave. Dave has written a terrific piece in Rock & Ice magazine about this experience. Time to set some goals for the season!
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...