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STONE COUNTRY (Read 144168 times)

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STONE COUNTRY
April 08, 2010, 01:00:07 pm
Malcolm Smith's La Saboteur Dumbarton
8 April 2010, 7:57 am

La Saboteur is the latest hard link up by Mal Smith at Dumbarton, an 8a+ climbing Sabotage and finishing left along Mike Lee's French-inpspired Tour du Technique, further colouring Dumbarton's reputation as the black Fontainebleau - Mais oui, c'est noir...





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#1 Arisaig Cave Project Sent
April 08, 2010, 01:00:09 pm
Arisaig Cave Project Sent
8 April 2010, 8:03 am



Dave MacLeod took advantage of a rest day to arrive at the Rhu Cvae fresh to complete his journey into darkness with the link up of the big cave project, citing it as a long 8a and a superb trip on perfect rock. The angle of the quartzite is punishing all the way and clever footwork and full-on technique is key. Check out Dave's blog for updates on this cave.



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#2 Rum Bouldering
April 08, 2010, 07:00:18 pm
Rum Bouldering
8 April 2010, 1:13 pm

The Hallival boulders have finally seen a bit more of a concerted action, here Chris Everett highballs it out in this remote corrie! Topo on UKC



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#3 All the Small Things - Video
April 09, 2010, 01:00:08 pm
All the Small Things - Video
9 April 2010, 7:04 am

Here's Pete Murray's taster of Dave on his new 8a at Arisaig:



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#4 Lendalfoot Bouldering
April 11, 2010, 01:00:06 pm
Lendalfoot Bouldering
11 April 2010, 7:39 am



Revisited this neglected wee coastal venue on a fine hot day with a cool sea breeze to dry the tidal boulders. Reclimbed a few old problems and have described the best here, named in absentia of any actual history - they have been done before.  Paul Savage visited here years ago and I suspect his '8a' project was the black wall -  a leaning tidal highball roof and wall.

Lendalfoot Boulders      NX 134 906

Lenndalfoot is  a summer shingle beach venue with a terrific view out to Ailsa Craig. The boulders along the beach provide limited bouldering with a few choice problems and some hard projects on the central black wall boulder. It is immediately accessible from laybys on the beach at Lendalfoot, a few miles south of Girvan on the A77.  There are three sectors: the northern being the best with the Orange Walls and northern leaning ‘pinnacle face’, the central black wall boulder (tidal) and the village boulders and walls to the south. Summer is best when a drying breeze dries out the weepy shale.

? 1. Toffee Nosed Bastard Font 6cNorthern sector. Orange Walls northern ‘pinnacle face’. SS and climb the steep tapering toffee bulge via a long reach off an undercut to a diagonal crack, use holds in this to slap up to the left arête to gain reluctant jugs over the top left.

Pinnacle Face of the Orange Walls (Toffee Nose)

? 2. Toffee Nosed Traverse Font 6bSS on the far right of the pinnacle face of the Orange Walls and traverse hard left to gain the left arête  and rock round this. Excellent technical lock offs and presses, the footholds are poor if the sand is high!

Project:



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#5 Perfect Conditions at Craigmore
April 13, 2010, 07:00:24 pm
Perfect Conditions at Craigmore
13 April 2010, 5:58 pm

Bone dry rock, moss crisp and , woods in bloom, bees buzzing round the willow, barn owl in residence...'HYMN TO NATURE!!' as Clambton might say... all in all a perfect morning at Craigmore. Here's a wee vid of the classic Wizard problem, feeling a little wobbly for an early season highball!



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#6 Rum Bouldering - Hallival Blocs
April 17, 2010, 07:00:13 pm
Rum Bouldering - Hallival Blocs
17 April 2010, 2:03 pm



From the Dibidil path all the way up to Coire nan Grunnd under Hallival lie hundreds of the cleanest boulders in Scotland in a wild lunar landscape of volcanic scale . Pristine 'allivalite' rock which feels grippier than gabbro - salt and pepper coloured, sculpted for the climber, generous grades on ridiculous angles and some big lines and perfect boulders... I hope to get back in the summer with Hamish Fraser who is working on a complete guide to this astonishing array of blocs.



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#7 Firefight by Malc Smith
April 21, 2010, 01:00:08 pm
Firefight by Malc Smith
21 April 2010, 9:24 am

Malcolm Smith has done another incredible link up at Dumbarton called Firefight 8b. It climbs the Pressure cave then finishes up Firestarter. The hardest way through this cave had previously been Dave MacLoed's Pressure which finished up Smokescreen at 8b. Now that a slightly easier variation finish to Smokescreen (7c) was found by Alan Cassidy, Malc continued his journey to find the hardest link-up lines at Dumbarton and logically added Firestarter (8a) as the natural 'hardest' finish to the cave! Thanks to Will Atkinson for recording this on the video...



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#8 Triangulation 8a at Arisaig
April 21, 2010, 01:00:10 pm
Triangulation 8a at Arisaig
21 April 2010, 9:29 am

Dave MacLeod climbed the obvious steep crack from deep out of the Arisaig Cave on April 19th. The crack is a new classic from standing at about 7a but the deep cave start made moving into it a real conundrum even for Dave. Another bomber contender for the best 8a in Scotland - on immaculate rock in a stunning setting (look out for resident otters if you're there). The name of the problem might refer to the navigation methods to actually find the cave!



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#9 Betaguides Site
April 29, 2010, 01:00:09 pm
Betaguides Site
29 April 2010, 8:12 am

Just a nod to the growing list of topos and info on UK bouldering at the Betaguides site. Lee Robinson is slowly pulling together the complete wilderness bouldering resource. Check it out or visit the Betaguide blog.

I really liked the look of this new North York Moors venue at Camp Hill, this problem looks like a mini version of West Side Story...

Lee Robinson on Phileas Fogg 7a+ Camp Hill Boulders

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#10 Cullen Bouldering Update
May 04, 2010, 01:00:08 pm
Cullen Bouldering Update
4 May 2010, 9:15 am

John Brown was kind enough to send a new topo of the Cullen Caves bouldering, as well as a video of his new problem 'Twister' (see below). If anyone wants a copy of the PDF guide, I'll put it up on the Boulder Scotland website soon, or just email me and I'll send it on. Thanks for the updates, John!



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#11 Glen Gyle
May 11, 2010, 07:00:06 pm
Glen Gyle
11 May 2010, 4:43 pm



Tom Charles Edwards has been beavering away at the top of Loch Katrine in Glen Gyle, developing the boulders here. The pleasant glen is remote but Tom seems to have unearthed a few gems, check out his new problems on Scottish Climbs.



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#12 Big Stone Country - New Blog!
May 12, 2010, 01:00:08 pm
Big Stone Country  - New Blog!
12 May 2010, 11:42 am



Guy Robertson & Adrian Crofton, editors for the  forthcoming magnum opus on Scottish Climbing called BIG STONE COUNTRY,  have started a blog for the book, along with a call for material and  photography. Above all, we are seeking dramatic crag  photography or interesting action shots - if you feel you have a good photo,  check out the list of crags on the blog and send any sample jpegs in the first instance to John  Watson at Stone Country.

The project is effectively a community book, designed to pull together everyone's enthusiasm for and experience of Scotland's best climbing cliffs. If you have any stories, photographs or articles, please don't hesitate to get involved.

Check out the crag list and the articles on the BIG STONE COUNTRY BLOG.

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#13 Lost Stones - Strathan Mor
May 26, 2010, 01:00:08 pm
Lost Stones - Strathan Mor
26 May 2010, 8:11 am



Ron Dempster tipped us off about these massive blocs on the way to Carnmore, underneath the trad arete of The Beanstalk (HVS) on Beinn Airigh Charr. The boulders in the foreground look good for a few big lines and who knows what lies in the jumble? They lie just to the west of Loch na Uamhag on the northern side of Beinn Airigh Charr, just off the path on Strathan Mor.

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#14 Delirium at Clashfarquhar
June 01, 2010, 01:00:06 pm
Delirium at Clashfarquhar
1 June 2010, 6:06 am

Tim Rankin succeeded this spring on the big roof project at Clashfarquhar.  With repeats of OPSDS (Optimus Prime SDS), this is another 8th grade on a growing tally of high end problems on the Aberdeen coast. The problem lies on the prop boulder roof just to the right of the Big Grey boulder on the Clashfarquhar platform. Tim describes it thus:

Delirium 8a The obvious perma chalked horizonal prow of the platform with a prop  boulder under it. SDS at the base of the prow at an obvious crimp. Slap out  right to slopers on the lip and continue out the prow via powerful slapping and  hugging to a desperate move off a poor sidepull gains the first real hold! A  final hard move gains jugs on the finishing arete.

Delirium Crux Pic Tim Rankin

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#15 The Rock That Keeps On Giving
June 11, 2010, 01:00:17 pm
The Rock That Keeps On Giving
11 June 2010, 7:24 am

What I keep returning to in bouldering is its ability to absorb our imagination and its open-ended nature. Dumbarton Rock, despite its heavy historical footfall, still keeps giving new 'lines'. In bouldering, there is a crucial core to enjoying it and this is the simple sense of play. The eliminate philosophy of deciding what lines to climb means a single lump of rock can provide limitless entertainment and fun. There aren't any restrictions as to line - it is the movement and quality of moves which counts, which is why we can get so absorbed by graffiti-scrawled rock in a tawdry industrial setting and still feel like we are lost in a new world. This focus on the actual climbing rather than the line dictated by the architecture (these are always the obvious aesthetic lines which are climbed first) means anything is possible and any move can be as good as another: the rock doesn't really care which way you go, after all. Hence the birth of traversing, such as the classic Consolidated Traverse, which opened a whole new game at Dumbarton.

A case in point are the new 'link-ups' and traverses which seem to be the future of Dumby, as they provide this 'custom-climbing' approach  which allows you to choose what problem you'd like to climb, a bit like a supermarket with hundreds of brands - just take your pick. Take the Mugsy Cave, for example. Chris Houston began linking and eliminating holds in new sequences with problems such as Houston, We Have a Problem (best name of the year!) and then Will Atkinson (and Malc Smith, amongst others) stepped in and linked up some old classic problems and suddenly we have a mini-Bowderstone! An example of Will's open-eyed approach is this classic link-up of Mestizo Arete, Mugsy Traverse and Malky, which he called Nice & Sleazy. It links a series of aesthetic (and hard) moves on a typically slopey and archetypal chunk of Dumbarton Rock:



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#16 Tripping Up Trump
June 23, 2010, 01:00:08 pm
Tripping Up Trump
23 June 2010, 10:04 am

Donald Trump has ridden roughshod over a huge groundswell of protest to turn part of the North East coast into yet another enclosed artificial space (a golf course). Corporate purchases of land in Scotland should be resisted - we won't get our free access statutes back if they are bought for developments. It is a modern form of the Clearances, just very insidious and smoothed over with massive PR. Don't be fooled by the 'jobs' or 'local money' argument, profits are going into offshore accounts of Trump and his cronies....

Check these guys out who are fighting against it, sign up and at least give your voice to it. Could be your local crag next...

Tripping Up Trump | Tripping Up Trump

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Summer Offer: Yearbook 2010 only £3.50
29 June 2010, 8:07 am



The Stone Country Yearbook is now available at half price. If you want a copy, it can be purchased through Paypal with Freepost and will be dropped through your letterbox next working day.

It includes sports updates and topos for The Orchestra Cave, Red Wall Quarry, Dunglass, Ardvorlich, Rob's Reed and bouldering for Shelterstone, Applecross, Trossachs and Glen Lednock, amongst many others.

£3.50 Freepost 1st Class





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#18 Craigmore Bloc
July 08, 2010, 07:00:09 pm
Craigmore Bloc
8 July 2010, 2:59 pm

Not to everyone's taste, this great little crag is a little mossy and north facing (dank in winter, midgy and humid in summer), but it does have a selection of fine technical boulder problems. It is one of my favourite spots when conditions are right, such as in June this year, when the long dry spells crisped the moss off the rock. I've put a PDF guide on the Boulder Scotland website, or click on the link below and print out. Unfortunately the humid July rains have returned the crag to a slippy, mossy jungle, best wait for the weather to dry again before a visit.

Open publication - Free publishing - More scotland

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#19 North West New Bouldering
July 26, 2010, 01:00:07 pm
North West New Bouldering
26 July 2010, 9:21 am



A week's ferry chasing on the ERT fares saw us through Moidart, Knoydart, Skye, Harris and Lewis, ending up in Ullapool.  It was good to see Harris getting some bouldering attention, especially Aird Mighe, which is a terrific venue on the Golden Road, where it is almost impossible to keep your eyes on the road as you wind from Tarbert down to Rodal. I suspect there are some superb gneiss roofs hidden in this wilderness of water, light and rock. A walk through the vastness with binoculars and tent is a must for the next visit, though I am conscious that once in this eye-level maze, I might never come out again!

A new topo for the accessible Aird Mighe can be found on Scottish Climbs, I managed the excellent short roof problem of Crystal Voyage, which feels hard in the summer heat as the ultrabasic crystalline nature of the rock makes it a bit soapy. 6c in winter I'd say, but you'd probably not want to be here in winter, unless you have tent pegs to stake out your mat and tarp. The crag is typical of Harris: a rounded barrel of glaciated gneiss, but what makes it attractive to the boulderer are the undercut roofs that lead out to the walls.  

Aird Mighe - Crystal Voyage 6c

In Ullapool, Ian Taylor and friends have been busy developing new routes and bouldering all around Coigach. Ian has produced an excellent new booklet guide to Ullapool New Routes, including the excellent technical bouldering at Ardmair, new routes at Rhue, Reiff, Ardmair and Rubha Dunan. The superb photo-topo booklet is a worthwhile addendum to the SMC Northern Highlands North. You can buy a copy in Ullapool's only real Outdoor shop at Northwest Outdoors (opposite the post office and beside Costcutters) , as well as Ian's Ullapool Bouldering guide.



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#20 Back on the Boulders
October 02, 2010, 07:00:12 pm
Back on the Boulders
2 October 2010, 4:20 pm

Well, it seems we are well into bouldering season again and despite some hefty rain showers, September had some pleasant days as the leaves turned golden and the air cooled and cleared after the mugginess of August. Time to get off Willie Arrol's sports walls and get the boulder mat out again.

Richie Betts took advantage of some fine weather to revisit the Coire nan Arr boulders in Applecross, some of look like the most perfect rock imaginable. A visit to try The Universal (below) is high on my list, but time and weather has so far conspired against a visit to the north. Hopefully we can get the area mapped and topo'd for the new Torridon and Applecross guidebook for next year.  

The Universal - Photo by Richie Betts

Speaking of guidebooks, I've just received the proof of the Dumbarton Rock guidebook by Stewart Brown. It looks terrific and I should have stock by mid October in time for those returning from Fontainebleau to test their mettle... it's an 80 page guide and so far the most complete guide yet to the bouldering (it also includes the sport routes and Dumbuck).

Below is a wee vid of a good 7a eliminate of the Zig Zag sit . I dug some stones away and this allowed a better position for the tricky first move of the sit start. I think a good digging session might link the base of this to the black cave...anyone brave enough to dig down further under the Eagle boulder?

And check out Betaguides new bouldering venues in the UK: this site is a terrific resource for the itinerant boulderer and has plenty of PDF topo's embedded in its pages.

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#21 Something that makes the heart glow...
October 06, 2010, 01:00:16 pm
Something that makes the heart glow...
6 October 2010, 11:33 am

 will report back from the forest in ten days...



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#22 Fontainebleau Notes
October 20, 2010, 01:00:06 pm
Fontainebleau Notes
20 October 2010, 8:07 am

Fontainebleau in October. It's like Christmas morning for boulderers, stepping out of the hire car and running into a pile of rocky presents and tinsel leaves under a pine tree. You get the idea. And despite the barricades and strikes and French indignation at the 'retraites', we made it there and back again. Arriving at Potala's ochre rocks in perfect autumnal stillness was, in Colin's words, 'as good as it gets'. Then the fun began...

The actual physical and debilitating ache of climbing every day in Fontainebleau for nearly 10 days ?has tramsformed into a nolstalgic ache (and lingering tendinitis!), but it was magical to have clear cool blue skies and crisp conditions to hand every day. Resting consisted of working through blue and orange circuits as it would have been criminal not to climb. Blistered pinkies from the sand at Cul de Chien led to customised rock shoes with flaps which allowed a day at Cuvier on some harder lines, but the Joker still spat me off with a perennial disdain.

To be honest, in such good conditions, it was more fun just traipsing through the forest getting away from the crowds and finding lonesome boulders with stunning lines, or just working my way through the circuits. The forest was truly at its best and walking in the footsteps of Denecourt, Millet and Stevenson only added to the mystique. There's much more to Fontainebleau than just the climbing...



 



Ban Lieu Nord 7a

La Vie D'Ange, Cuvier 7a

Le Surplomb Allayaud, Jean des Vignes - surely 7a!!!



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#23 Dumbarton Guide - Now Published
October 21, 2010, 01:00:28 pm
Dumbarton Guide - Now Published
21 October 2010, 7:40 am

Stewart Brown's guide to Dumbarton Rock and Dumbuck has finally arrived! It is an 80 page, full-colour guide to the complete bouldering and sport at Dumby (and Dumbuck).

Stewart's efforts to reclimb (and clean) many forgotten as well as classic lines means the beta for the descriptions is very fresh and in many cases cleaned up from the 'fuzzy logic' of some mysterious lines and grades that had lain dormant for so long. All grades have been rationalised and updated, but it is Stewart's dedicated efforts to add his knowledge and detail that will save a few of us from battering away at hopeless sequences! The guide offers the most comprehensive tick-list to date for the sport and bouldering at Dumbarton, with 211 dedicated problems, plus all the sport and a little of the best trad. Circuits have been updated and included (Yellow through to Black) and projects are included, as well as feature classics, photo-topos for each boulder/sport face and some fine photography from Jonathan Bean of http://www.dumby.info/ - thanks Jonathan!

The guide is exclusively available through this site at £6.99 plus some P&P with first class next day delivery in the UK. It's an essential guide book for the Dumby afficionado and the visitor alike. To get a copy just follow the Paypal trail >>>
Sample of the Introduction:



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#24 Benmore Glen
October 25, 2010, 01:00:19 pm
Benmore Glen
25 October 2010, 6:41 am



I spent a fine Sunday amongst the early Autumn snowcap peaks of Ben More and Stob Binnein,  stomping round the giants of Benmore Glen. In summer, this area would make a good venue if you can stomach carrying mats up this far to protect some of the highball lines. The  landrover track from Benmore Farm makes this higher glen reasonably accessible and an hour's slog at most. Some good short steep roofs can be found on the bigger blocs such as the Heather Head. There is some sound clean stone as well as the usual lichenous schist found on higher altitude stone, as though it needs a rhino skin to protect against the withering bealach winds.

The best rock was found on the giant of the upper glen - the massive and lonely Benmore Bloc which can be seen from the old rotten footbridge as you gain the higher glen. Sitting in the bowl of the upper glen under the Bealach, it has four distinct and just about boulderable faces (in terms of height). The bloc has some fine easy lines, some hard mid-range classic '7th grade' lines and some futuristic lines on its steep north face. All the landings are good (while other stones are typically boggy). The best stones are: the Heather Head boulder just uphill of the old bridge; the Ben More boulder itslef and the Bealach blocs.

 

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