Stone Country Book Orders 3 for 2

Just to let everyone know we are doing a special 3 for 2 summer offer of Bouldering in Scotland/Elements and Stone Play for a limited period offer of £40.00, for all of you who might not have the full collection!

This includes Pete Murray's DVD on Scottish bouldering - a 40 minute feature on the spirit of bouldering in Scotland, as well as the new Bouldering in Scotland guide and last year's Stone Play - the Art of Bouldering.

Even if you have one or two of these publications, you can take advantage of the offer to stock up on early Christmas presents!!

Check out the main website for other special offers and forthcoming books!

I've also added some new bouldering topos to the Stone Country website.

Wake Up and Have Your Corncrakes - Mull bouldering

I came to Mull to further scope out the fine bouldering around Fionnphort on the pink granite walls, one of which contributed the template to our own Scottish Climbs website. This is a place for summer bouldering, meandering between perfect walls and slabs, dancing along the beflowered crisp machair, climbing to the endless accompanimant of skylarks and corncrakes (by 5 in the morning these were 'bloody corncrakes').



Fionnphort is idyllic for long roaming sesssions of climbing in the easy movement and sudden puzzling positions into which granite slabs lure you... the climbing is either enjoyable or simply impossible due to the blank and rounded nature of the slabby domes. Here and there are some good cracklines and the occasional nodule pokes out to provide a resting foothold or a thankful hand feature. Most of the time the body is poised on fulcrums of balance, hoping the granite crystals won't crumble, or you piano-finger larger crystals to inch over that mantle.



There are hundreds of short solo walls and crags awaiting the bolder boulderer, around Kintra just to the north and at Erraid and Fidden to the south. Listen out for the famous corncrakes - you can't mistake them... they sound like some hopeless car-jacker touching two live wires together - krek krek! krek krek!


I've put a topo of a fun 'yellow' level circuit on my main website on the topo page.

Mountain Weather

Cir Mhor in May

Well, what happened to spring? It just seems to have jumped straight into high summer, but the ones we remember from long ago: mild winds, hazy sun, crisped grass and no rain... how long will it last, and without midges to boot? Maybe this will be the trad summer we have been waiting for!

I took a day off working on the new Font guide to head over to Arran, the large boilder plate slabs of granite gleaming like broken mirrors. The streams bubbled in full jacuzzi mode and confused buzzards circled high on the unseasonable thermals. Expecting a rash of parties on Cir Mhor, we were surprised to note only one other party on South Ridge. We meandered up West Flank Route, enjoying the sunny belays and cooling updrafts of air, listening to the endless cawing of ravens. Looking down over the vast U-bowl of Glen Rosa, the boulder fields caught my attention and it was tempting to go and look at a few unclimbed (but probably holdless) roofs after the route, but it's too warm for bouldering now and the body yearns for long sequences of dry rock in fine situations, which Arran provides.

Angus Murray on West Flank Route

After a lazy start on the second ferry over, the walk-in and climbing had eaten the hours and it was 5pm already, so we stomped back down, foodless, as the ravens had stolen all my baby-bels and a stack of four pancakes from my rucsac. The new path makes for a quick descent and we had time for the obligatory and welcome pint in Brodick.

Clouds over Glen Rosa

Scottish Bouldering Spring Updates

Claire Youdale bouldering Arran

It's been a vigorous period of good conditions and boulderers around Scotland have profited from the dry spell now rapidly coming to a soggy close!

On Arran, Claire Youdale finished off the headwall of The Mushroom to give 'Invasive Species', a true and proper Font 6b+ finish to the Rock Lobster problem which jumped off at the jugs. Now only the big pocket project remains!!

In the northwest, Ian Taylor repeated 'The Mission' and has been beavering at the problems on Ardmair Crag, completing the imaginative 'Ian's Problem' Font 6c, see the pic. The steeper walls here stay dry in light rain and have some good traverses and natural straight-ups. A topo will follow soon.

Ian's Problem, Ardmair

In Glen Nevis, Dave MacLeod has continued to develop the Pine Alps boulders, completing the true Bear Trap Prow at Font 8a+, hardest in the glen, Dave? He also did the attractive crack-line to the right of Waterfall arete, at 7b, which appears on his blog in an amusingly constructed video. He also did a direct to the 'Dude' problem at Ruthven, at about 7b, with a hangover (Dave!).

True Bear Trap 8a+ Pic Claire MacLeod

At Dumby, Stewart Brown and Niall McNair repeated Pongo Sit with a new 'Australian' grip on the crux hold, which brings the grade down if you can manage the handhold. It was discovered by Tom Charles-Edwards' Australian friend, who thought all our 'Scottish' methods unnecessarily brutal and proceeded to knuckle-jam the niche and do the first crux move entirely static!

Ben Litster returned from Magic Wood, uber-psyched and went straight up to the Lost Valley, climbing a good looking 7c wall called 'The Grass is Greener', just up and right from the leaning bloc. He also repeated King Kong at Dumby, a reward for a lot of hard graft, well done!!

Grass is Greener 7c Lost Valley

Luke Fairweather completed his project Twilight Princess 8a+ (Kayla linked to Pit Left Hand) and repeated some new classics such as Shameless 7c and Optimus Prime 7c.

Twilight Princess 8a+, Portlethen

At Torridon, Richie Betts climbed the wee cave wall behind the Ship on the left, reminiscent of a miniature 'Dreamtime' he called it 'Snoozetime', it's not quite as hard as its Swiss muse, but a good 6c+ he thinks.

Snoozetime

If you want any problems reported, contact boulderscotland@gmail.com

Font Gravity

Apremont

Everyone knows the gravity is heavier in the forest.... I took a research trip to Fontainebleau to 'climb lighter' and collect my thoughts for the next bouldering book, before we launch into a few Scottish trad books from Stone Country Press.

The finest quality to bouldering in my opinion is its flexibility and this is well worth exploiting in an area as diverse and huge as Fontainebleau, you can search for varying styles of climbing, even changing them on the same boulder within seconds - should you find your crimping strength is weak but your core tension is good, drop the sharp marble-edged walls and climb into the depths of a slopey roof! Or vice versa... Font is a place of pure experimentation and allows you the luxury of trying your new formulae with no more than the fear that you're popping placebos, it's all in the mind anyway... just move on if nothing happens, that's the philosophy of the forest! Thousands and thousands of these little experiments provided a few choice 'cures' to Font gravity and a new problem or two.

'Bart'

The new guide '1789' Straight-Ups in Fontainebleau (a significant number in France!) is a work of genius, pulling together complexity into a clear and logical layout, with a simple and elegant design, allowing the climber the time just to climb! The maps are all cross-referenced and super-accurate, it's a lifetime's reflection of a love of the forest from Bart van Raaij - the book simply became known as 'Bart' on the trip, we passed 'Bart' from hand to hand, threw it on the ground a thousand times, drove over it, spilt espresso on it, sat on the bog with it with dirty hands, hit slobbery dogs with it, used it as a sun-shield, rain-hat, left it out in the dew... and it is still in one piece, so the production standards are pretty rugged. As I said, a work of genius, if you are operating at 7a or over. And did my own experimentation work? A little, I notched off one more point of gravity on my very slidey scale, proving that nothing comes easy in Font... I'd say a grade a year if you are lucky!!

EOS, Chateauveau, 7b

New Bouldering Venues and Last Orders

We have a few copies of 'Elements' left and are selling these with the new Bouldering in Scotland Guide for £30, so if anyone wants to take advantage, please look at the Films page on the main site, otherwise the offer drops end of April.

When you publish a guide, there is usually a rash of sudden activity and development, which is great and the point of getting excited about bouldering in the first place. Magnus Johnson has found some new bouldering near Kinlochleven, mentioning 'one roof which is simply huge! Think the inside of the Shelterstone but with no surrounding blocks...' which all sounds interesting! Hopefully we'll see some problems there soon. For the adventurous, it's at NN149609, most of the boulders are mossy, but there may be some potential.

I had a skirt of the North East for the guide but found little of interest, but we obviously missed the bouldering at Forss, near Thurso, courtesy of Raymond Wallace... I'm only sorry I couldn't have put it in the guide, we just didn't hear about it until we published! Raymond has done a nice online topo.

Forss Walls

Bouldering in Scotland additional topos

Those of you locals maybe a little disappointed at the problem-count of your favourite venues in 'Bouldering in Scotland', do not fear! I have added some additional page downloads to the main site on the Scottish page. Venues include: Craigmaddie full topo, Shelterstone circuit, Scatwell, Ben A'an and The Whangie. Development continues apace, indeed, Tom Kirkpatrick has just updated the Cammachmore topo on Scottish Climbs, and Dave MacLeod has added a new V10 to the Pine boulders in Glen Nevis (The Bear Trap Prow, pics on his blog) - he also did a very kind and exhaustive review for the new guide, thanks Dave!

One of my problems as an independent publisher has been sourcing good photos for books and this is difficult on a limited budget as, quite fairly, photographers need paid just like the rest of us. This becomes a problem when you are doing a large edited collection and paying twenty photographers would quickly make a book too expensive, so we tend to rely on favours and generosity, trying to pay back in kind what has been submitted (usually free books and a little advertising in return). I know there are plenty of good photographers out there and I did ask a lot of folk to contribute to 'Bouldering in Scotland', unfortunately maybe my poverty and inability to pay much is the curse of the small publisher, so I hope people can forgive some of the images from my own camera... I am no great photographer but needed images to help illustrate the variety of bouldering in Scotland. Anyway, thanks to all who helped contribute to the book... it really wouldn't have existed without such generosity of spirit and profits from the book you can rest assured are being pumped straight back into serving the climbing community with quality publications to inspire them - that's our remit at all times.

Another superb image from www.cubbyimages.com

It's an expensive game just printing a book, but in future I hope to be able to commission more photography for Scottish books. Indeed the next big project is a Scottish trad book on big climbs in Scotland, with hopefully some great images from Scottish photographers who sacrifice so much time and effort and money to get into great positions and great landscapes.

For example, check out Dave Cuthbertson's landscape images here.

Book and Film Night

Just to remind all that the 'Bouldering in Scotland' and 'Elements' bouldering movie will be launched this Thursday evening at Cotswolds Outdoors, Crow Road, Glasgow, at 7pm. There will be a short talk and slideshow of new bouldering areas, as well as a twenty minute preview of the movie. Free wine and discounted stock at Cotswolds (book and DVD will be heavily discounted).

Easy access and parking at Cotswolds, just besides Sainsbury's in Partick (Crow Road), or catch a tube to Partick and it's a two minute walk round the corner.

There will be free wine and no doubt lots of banter about all the new bouldering areas... all questions will be answered. New venues include: Lost Valley, Craigmaddie, Coilessan, Ardnamurchan, Ardgour, Brin Rock etc. Everyone welcome!