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Skye bouldering development (or lack thereof) (Read 15473 times)

andy_e

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It seems like Skye bouldering hasn't really developed much in the 12 years since I first looked at the bouldering during my undergrad mapping. In those days I heard tales of Carn Liath scattered with thousands of boulders, hints of coires littered with glacial debris, seaside boulder tumbles where you can get a first ascent just by sneezing...

But still it looks like Skye is massively underdeveloped, unless I'm missing something. The recent guide to Carn Liath still contains scant details of a few tantalising blocs. The Cuillin's cast-offs near Glen Brittle are well established. But where are the other areas, and why are there so few details about them?

I'm off to Skye for a month on Saturday, so I'm keen to check out some places, take a stiff brush and do some development. Anybody going to be around? Any tip-offs or details/topos would be greatly appreciated...

Bonjoy

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I'm off to Mull on Sat for a week. Planning to be near Skye for a week after that. On family hol but might be able to meet up for a day. I have some exceedingly good looking blocks to try out on Skye, which I spotted last year but didn't have chance to climb on.

SA Chris

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I think it was Fultonius's mate (Ally's Pally!) who wrote the original guide, he might know what the latest info is.

carlisle slapper

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I've developed around 60problems with Caff, Adam, Ben and Ray on our trips up Coruisk, all without a pad. Hardest one somewhere around 7C+ish but most are in the sixes and low 7's. There are boulders all round Coruisk which have nice flat access walks and mostly nice gabbro which hardly needs cleaning (hence the high evening problem tickage). It's just not been worth writing them up with the current scottish guide situation and general lack of umph up there. Writing stuff up clearly is also a talent and requires time. I'd thoroughly recommend an overnight trip in there on the boat and camping near a cluster at the far end of the loch. Lots of hard stuff to do there without having to slog up the hills. If you take some Binos the lighter gabbro is the best for bouldering, the dark purply boulders tend to be a bit rough for hard problems.

Carn Liath and Talisker bay look well worth a sniff about.
Scotland is woefully understaffed for bouldering development, exciting for those who go though.



Fultonius

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Aye, the old protagonists don't really boulder much anymore. I'll ping a few messages round and see if anyone's still active. I think the Lie O'conner situation knocked the wind out of the sails (as did the main developer/guide writer moving to Glasgow for 10 years).

When are you up?

JamieG

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For the uninitiated. What’s the current Scottish guide situation’?

And wouldn’t writing up areas that have started to be developed improve the umph? Otherwise nobody knows about them. I appreciate it takes time but a simple pdf definitely encourages visits. My brothers Sheigra guide resulted in a few more people going and adding lines. It’s now been added in the guide, on ukc etc. Definitely helps get an area established.

scragrock

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Agree with JamieG on this one.
PDF's and better UKC guides do encourage traffic{ Northwest Outdoors, Ted's guide to Primrose and Cummingston and Robbie's guide to Sheigra } . Just needs someone with enough time and drive to document it.

A larger question might be- "Should we"?

SA Chris

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www.scottishclimbs.com was a good place for providing information and the wiki worked well with people updating information live, but the site developers lost interest especially with the constant spam attacks, so it got locked and parked. I put most of the Glen Clova info on there, and the updates seemed to work well, apart from some people deciding they didn't like problem names and changing them completely.

A lot of local recent developments are in NE Outcrops files section on facebook, but it's hard to keep track of what's happening outside your local area, maybe an equivalent to peakbouldering.info is needed? I think UKC is a less than ideal repository, do to the restrictive layout, and limitations of providing reasonable topos or maps of areas.

I've got a word version of recent stuff I've done locally, just need to add some photos sometime, and wrap up the projects!

As far as the "should we" question, I think it should be done as a matter of course, to allow people to know what's good where, as well as preventing retroclaiming etc. There is so little info about that it's hard to get an idea of what is worth travelling for.

Bonjoy

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Agree with JamieG on this one.
PDF's and better UKC guides do encourage traffic{ Northwest Outdoors, Ted's guide to Primrose and Cummingston and Robbie's guide to Sheigra } . Just needs someone with enough time and drive to document it.

A larger question might be- "Should we"?
If anyone one has the time and inclination I can see no reason why the answer would be no.
Excess visitor pressure seems highly unlikely. There's so much still to do that you could hardly argue that documentation is robbing people of the chance to explore uncharted ground. What other counter arguments are there?

JamieG

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I would almost flip that last bit Bonjoy. I think good documentation actually encourages exploration, if you want to do a few first ascents. Since you know which areas, boulders and lines have been developed and climbed. Therefore are less worried about everything getting retro-claimed.

I seriously doubt any of the Scottish venues are in danger of over exposure and too much climber pressure. The number of local boulderers is pretty thin on the ground. And most visits come from people having a trip to the area for a week or two. But the rest of the time I imagine most venues are totally deserted.

SA Chris

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Indeed, in fact a bit more traffic would benefit most places, especially if people don't mind helping out with a bit of a scrub, rather than leaving comments like "the top could do with a clean" as though there is cleaning staff awaiting your instruction.

Off the top of my head, i expect it's only Dumby, Boltsheugh, Torridon and Portlethen where i have ever bumped into other boulderers.

andy_e

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For the uninitiated. What’s the current Scottish guide situation’?

The latest guide (Boulder Scotland) has Coire Lagan and Carn Liath in, but there's very few problems described at Carn Liath.

When are you up?

Literally the whole of August!

andy_e

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I've developed around 60problems with Caff, Adam, Ben and Ray on our trips up Coruisk, all without a pad. Hardest one somewhere around 7C+ish but most are in the sixes and low 7's. There are boulders all round Coruisk which have nice flat access walks and mostly nice gabbro which hardly needs cleaning (hence the high evening problem tickage). It's just not been worth writing them up with the current scottish guide situation and general lack of umph up there. Writing stuff up clearly is also a talent and requires time. I'd thoroughly recommend an overnight trip in there on the boat and camping near a cluster at the far end of the loch. Lots of hard stuff to do there without having to slog up the hills. If you take some Binos the lighter gabbro is the best for bouldering, the dark purply boulders tend to be a bit rough for hard problems.

thanks for this info Dan, sounds like exactly the sort of place I'm after (especially now I just bought a mountain bike...) and the sort of thing that I think would benefit from a guide. Let's face it, it's not going to become overcrowded, but a few notes would make it a really special place for the dedicated to visit!

I think Torridon is the prime example of a "big" Scottish area, when it went big a few years ago, people were worried it might get trashed, but it's never actually that busy, is fantastic and accessible, and well documented and clean. If Carn Liath is as big as people say, then it could be the "next Torridon", attracting people specifically to boulder there on trips, but it'll never really get that busy will it?

teestub

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Coruisk is going to be a little more difficult for the average boulderer to access than the Celtic Jumble!

SA Chris

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Midge levels similar though!

GazM

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Interesting discussion. I'd agree with Andy that Torridon isn't yet trashed but there's no question that since the guide and it going 'big' you can start to see wear and tear creeping in. Finger tape, more worn paths, donkey lines, cretins playing music etc. Nothing as bad as the average Peak venue (which I'm always dismayed by) but I guess we just have to be careful what we wish for.
I hope Rich wont mind me saying that seeing these changes was part of the reason he started going less.

Alex-the-Alex

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I thinks its likely to change in the next few years. A lot more boulderers and its easier than ever to document stuff. But it still takes lots of time. And a lot of days hunting and scrubbing are climbing days lost… Ive prodded the SMC about starting to record boulders but got little response and cant change things from within as I haven’t walked up enough large rounded hills to qualify for membership. Something like Unknown Stones would be great with lots of folk uploading smaller pdf guides. A lot more feasible than a printed guide.

Agree that documenting encourages more climbing, cleaning and further exploring. An obvious one would be an updated guide to Glen Nevis for anyone local on here? Theres loads more giants hidden in the glen and a topo revival might be what spurs that on. On the other hand if I was local I wouldn’t want to be shouting about anything until Id had a good shot  first!

On the popularity note, I was chatting to the couple who own the house where you park for erraid and they’ve seen a considerable rise in the number of climbers and large student groups piling over to island since the lovely pink walls were published in Latters guides. Pretty photos and insta posts make ripples. To the point where they don’t want any of the rock further south of erraid published (a large SSSI I think?). So its not entirely a moot point. Torridon is another example like Gaz says. But maybe more documented areas might help spread the load?

Will Hunt

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Documenting stuff is an effort but one that is much reduced if you go in knowing that you're going to try and document something at the end of it. Taking photos for topos and writing notes as you go along is essential really, otherwise you end up having to make trips to places to sort all this stuff out at a time when you want to visit other venues. In lieu of any other database, I'd whack stuff onto UKC as the de facto standard for recording stuff at the moment. Good quality text descriptions of the boulders and problems, along with maybe a a Google My Maps effort showing which boulders are which will be enough to show what the current state of development is and allow other people to focus their efforts on repeating stuff or looking for new stuff according to their preference - it's really frustrating to put time into "developing" something to find that someone has done it before but not bothered to record it until they can record their work as a retro-claim.

Will Hunt

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I thinks its likely to change in the next few years. A lot more boulderers and its easier than ever to document stuff. But it still takes lots of time. And a lot of days hunting and scrubbing are climbing days lost… Ive prodded the SMC about starting to record boulders but got little response and cant change things from within as I haven’t walked up enough large rounded hills to qualify for membership. Something like Unknown Stones would be great with lots of folk uploading smaller pdf guides. A lot more feasible than a printed guide.

Agree that documenting encourages more climbing, cleaning and further exploring. An obvious one would be an updated guide to Glen Nevis for anyone local on here? Theres loads more giants hidden in the glen and a topo revival might be what spurs that on. On the other hand if I was local I wouldn’t want to be shouting about anything until Id had a good shot  first!

On the popularity note, I was chatting to the couple who own the house where you park for erraid and they’ve seen a considerable rise in the number of climbers and large student groups piling over to island since the lovely pink walls were published in Latters guides. Pretty photos and insta posts make ripples. To the point where they don’t want any of the rock further south of erraid published (a large SSSI I think?). So its not entirely a moot point. Torridon is another example like Gaz says. But maybe more documented areas might help spread the load?

Have you spoken to Rob Lovell? He is in charge of their guidebook stuff and is a Young Person who like things like  :o Sport Climbing  :o
I'd be surprised if he was against the documentation of bouldering as part of the SMC's work. If they pass up the chance to do it then some Unknown Stones type effort will probably spring up (Unknown Stones was a piece of piss to create but needs some work now that it's become so big and unwieldy) or a Greg Chapman will spring from the heather.

Clubs like the CC and SMC often boast of their being the true keepers of The Definitive Record which just isn't true anymore, particularly if they haven't got involved with recording bouldering development which has been and will continue to be the biggest growth area in climbing. I mean. The damage has already been done there from the clubs' point of view. Lakes bouldering, Peak bouldering, Welsh bouldering etc etc have all been documented away from the clubs - though I suspect it's all just a product of who's doing the development: most people are not involved in clubs now.

Sorry. I've rambled horribly.

Documenting the Skye stuff isn't going to damage the rock. It's still miles and miles from most places and it's made of fucking gabbro. Some people claim to go through a pair of approach shoes in one Cuillin traverse and some punters even recommend wearing gardening gloves! It's the climbers' skin I worry for.

scragrock

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Interesting discussion. I'd agree with Andy that Torridon isn't yet trashed but there's no question that since the guide and it going 'big' you can start to see wear and tear creeping in. Finger tape, more worn paths, donkey lines, cretins playing music etc. Nothing as bad as the average Peak venue (which I'm always dismayed by) but I guess we just have to be careful what we wish for.
I hope Rich wont mind me saying that seeing these changes was part of the reason he started going less.

I posed the question for exactly this conversation.

 I started out years ago firmly believing that everything should be named  topo'd and graded as it was bloody hard work developing and it means a great deal to the individuals involved.

I never quite understood Richie's lack of interest in that side of things and his continuing worry over it{Torridon Guide}.
I get it Now.
For me projects and problems are about Your relationship and experience with them over time and the place that surrounds that microcosm.

I am still finding my way with this but more and more i am heading in the direction of quiet climbing without the need for publication. The idea of nature creeping gradually back and obscuring my old victories and failures so the next and subsequent generations can find and discover those lines in order to fight the good fight afresh i find really appealing.

Just a thought anyway.


Side note- I use UKC to post up the various wee Highland areas i have developed, its NOT ideal but its free.

andy_e

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I think I lie somewhere in the middle, I don't think every boulder problem needs a name because most of the problems I've done never had names until recently, and I don't think there needs to be exhaustive documentation of every eliminate (except at Almscliff). But what is great is when there's a tantalising glimpse, a photo and some problems documented at a smaller venue, or a good idea of the scope at a larger venue, so that interest is piqued and guides and knowledge slowly become more developed. There's a fine line between underdevelopment and overdevelopment though...

I think, as both Dan and Will have alluded to, it's all too easy to make a shit guide that frustrates, and very difficult to make a guide with clear instructions, maps and diagrams, which help you avoid stumbling around boggy, bracken-filled hillslopes cursing at inanimate objects. But a lot of places on Skye have absolutely nothing. There's a certain charm to that, but it just shocks me how little things have moved forwards there in the past 15 years.

Coops_13

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I think I'm definitely more towards the documented side of the spectrum but I think it depends on whether you're time-rich or time-poor. Very jealous of your impending trip Andy...

My bouldering exploits in Scotland have all been on roadtrips so each visit to an area was max a day or two. The first one was a mix of trad, sport and bouldering but if there had been a larger 'holy grail' venue documented, that would have definitely altered our itinerary. The second one was a non-climbing roadtrip (where I went to Skye). The only bouldering I did was a half-day on Malc's Arete, I wasn't as psyched on the Brittle boulders but maybe that was due to the reduced Instagram coverage...

GazM

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The truth of the matter is that there just aren't many people bouldering up here in the Highlands, and even fewer on Skye specifically. Sure, we get people up on trips going to the honeypots, but the number of active locals is tiny. And on average its locals that have the time and knowledge needed to develop stuff. Up here bouldering is still very much a fringe activity relative to trad and even sport climbing, whereas I get the feeling that elsewhere bouldering is perhaps equally popular. I suspect this is partly because there aren't any decent modern style bouldering walls in the Highlands.

For this reason I've not yet made much of an effort to properly write up lots of the stuff I've done locally because there's hardly anyone around that's likely to want to find it.

Coincidentally, after recently finishing a project I decided it deserves being known about so I'm currently trying to write up a load of my stuff to go on the North West Outdoors blog (the outdoor shop in Ullapool, check it out) but finding the time to do it justice is proving tricky (kids, innit).

andy_e

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Yeah fair enough Gaz, finding the time must be tricky! Though I must encourage you to write up stuff local to you as I've a friend who's just moved to the Inverness area and will possibly be over that way a bit!

It's a vicious cycle, nobody boulders so nobody develops so nobody visits to boulder so nobody develops so nobody boulders...

GazM

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Yeah, chicken and egg.
I'll get round to it eventually.

 

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