Two days of Summer

Circumstances finally came together  to merit exploring a local riverside micro-crag above a deep pool last night (i.e. two days with temperatures above 15 degrees).  If you've ever driven into Strathconon from Contin you'll have driven past it, just right of the wee bridge after the turn off to Glenmarksie. I forgot to pack a belay device and discovered that down-jumarring is possible but a pain in the arse.

By the time I'd scoped a line and given it a scrub the black clouds had gathered and it was pouring with rain, but the steepness and trees at the top kept it dry, and it was pretty easy, maybe Font 5/Brit 5b?  It was so much fun I ran round and set up the camera to record a second lap.  If there's more hot weather I'll scrub some more lines as there's more to do.

Conon Wall from Gareth Marshall on Vimeo.

Scraps

I think I write this exact same blog post this time every year.  Summer stagnation.  To be fair, I've probably picked a good time to have a slightly tweaked A2 pulley and to be planning a wedding, as the weather really has been unhelpful.  It's not been crap in a dramatic, torrential downpour kind of way, but more in an insidious, cold, blustery showery kind of way.  I mean, you probably could have got out quite a bit if you had endless free time to sit out the showers, but for me it's just been easier not to bother. C'est la vie.  You can hardly live up here and complain when it rains.

Murdo sitting out another shower between gardening and hot aches at Duntelchaig

Don't get me wrong, I've done odds and sods: time spent cleaning forgotten local routes and exploring for hidden rock. I'm yet to find the new Ship Boulder lurking in the woods, but I've not given up yet.  I've even managed a bit of climbing too (in addition to laps of open-handed circuits on the board).  The trad highlight would probably be The Hill at Creag Dubh, a great voyage through the center of an impressive historic wall.  On the sporty front the best (and only?) route for a while would probably be Shakin Like a Leaf, a classic Cheddar Gorge 7a that I did on a balmy West Country evening while down south visiting family.  Due to a slightly tweaky finger I've been laying off the bouldering recently, but while south I visited the Forest of Dean's sandstone blocks at Huntsham and came away impressed. Local classic The Golden Bicep 6C+, with it's slopers straight out of Fontainbleau, was probably the best of the day .

As ever, the dreams of an endless sunny summer haven't materialised quite yet. My cunning plan had been to bite the bullet and learn how to jam, and I was looking forward to dropping the ego and getting mauled on routes with lowly grades.  It's something I've always shied away from and am pretty bad at, having always been drawn to the thin, delicate end of the spectrum rather than honest burly tussles. I think that my trip to Arapiles last year really showed up my lack of competence and confidence in climbing in this style and the reality of trad climbing is that you need the full repertoire. I'm hopeful that the sun will eventually shine for long enough on a weekend and I'll be able to traipse to the sandstone west and have a fight.  In the meantime, is that a something between the trees?

Remember to charge the battery!

I put together a very rough video compilation of some of this season's local (ish) boulder problems. Naturally, I ran out of battery or forgot to press record when I did some of the year's better problems, so it's a bit of a random assortment.  If anything it's perhaps a showcase of what's lurking out there if you can be bothered to put in the effort.


Highland Boulders: Winter 2014-15 from Gareth Marshall on Vimeo.

Clearing the Decks

My job as Capercaillie Project Officer for RSPB, SNH and Forestry Commission Scotland means that around now things all get a bit hectic.  There aren't too many of these elusive forest grouse left in Scotland, but for those that are still holding on, mid to late April is business time.  Capercaillie breed by their peculiar lekking bahaviour, when all the males in an area get together and have a battle to establish who's the biggest and baddest and gets to pass on his genes while females hang around the sidelines and decide on the winner. It makes for a pretty dramatic spectacle, but in a rather antisocial manner all this happens deep in the woods and within the first hour or two of daylight.  In order to get an idea of capercaillie numbers from year to year, it's part of my job to spend the next two weeks sleeping out in hides, or getting up very early to get into position before dawn and, naturally, they don't have weekends off. The data we get from the famously grueling two weeks of lek counts are the basis for much of the rest of my work, and as this is my first year in the job, I'm pretty excited. 

Still, from a climbing perspective the next two weeks are going to be a sleep-deprived caffeine-fuelled write-off. I've known this was coming for a while, so have been trying to get out as much as possible in the last month or so to make up for it. As luck would have it, there's been some pretty good weather up here lately, as the state of my fingertips bears testimony.

The routes season started with two glorious March Saturdays in a row at Goat Crag, and despite tying-on for the first time since Australia in October I came away with a nice haul of amnesia onsights and a redpoint of Too Old to be Famous, my first of the original Goat 7bs. Next weekend I joined Dr Dave for a guided tour at Zed Buttress at Brin.  This is Andy Wilby's latest sport development crag, with about 15 routes bolted between 6b and brick hard, and home to his piece de resistance and the areas hardest route; The Force, at a possible 8b. Ouch.  As per my first visit to Crag One at Brin, I was well impressed with the work Andy and co. have put into the crag - cleaning, bolting, occasionally reinforcing suspect holds, and generally making it a cool place to be.  I managed not to disgrace myself by onsighting the warm up (phew) and then flashing future area classic The Rockness Monster Returns, a morpho 6c/7a/7a+, depending who you talk to.  It all went downhill shortly afterwards of course, with a failed siege on Little Minx 7b(+?) in the hot sun.  Next time? There's plenty there in the grades I'm approaching, so I'm psyched for a return.

Andy on The Force 8a+/8b (Photo: Murdo Jamieson)

On a sunny evening after work last week I put two long-held boulder ambitions to bed: the high but not too hard Brin Done Before 6Cish, which I had walked under to get to Zed Buttress a few days before and could hear it mocking me: "call yourself an Inverness boulderer? Not without me on your ticklist".  With another hour of daylight I raced over to Ruthven and put paid to White Russian/Mike's Problem 7A+, which I first tried in 2013 but lacked the power.  It's nice to see some things changing.

The olden days on Brin Done Before (Photo: Rich Betts)

Betts doing White Russian.

Nearly up to date: this weekend I made 3 trips across the Dirrie Mor towards Ullapool. It was Reiff in the Woods on Friday afternoon for another battle with The Crack, an unsung 7A+ gem that I still can't do, then Saturday and and Sunday turning left at Braemore Junction and heading to the church of Am Fasgadh with Tess and Murdo respectively (see why I've got no skin?).  I was keen to do Warm Brown Streak, with it's crux of three long powerful moves after a strenuous clip.  I'd been on it late last year, but that was before the shed regime.  On Saturday I was close, but puntered myself by working out better beta late in the day when I was too tired to perform.  I managed to persuade Murdo he wanted to go there on Sunday and eventually got it done by the skin of my teeth on the 3rd go.  I'm not sure about the grade.  If The Warm Up is 7b then Warm Brown is 7b+, but who know's what The Warm Up is? Regardless, it's enough to keep me happy and the FOMO at bay for the next two blurry weeks. 

Right, I'd better get some sleep.          

The Clamour

You'll never find this.

The changing of the clocks is supposed to herald the arrival of Spring, bringing the promise of sunshine, dry crags and getting pumped. Instead, as I write there's fresh snow falling on the hills just outside the house, which makes me think that the winter bouldering season is lingering on.

The generally crap weather has meant limited trips to the West coast sandstone Meccas: I think it's only been one day at Torridon and Three at Reiff in the Woods.  I've been getting withdrawal symptoms. If you're a boulderer living near Inverness these really should be your first choice venues. Amazing rock, genuine national standard quality problems across the grades and in a truly beautiful setting. And they're really not that far away.  I'm not entirely sure why I'm banging the drum, because I like them as the quiet, unspoilt places that they are, but with more and more people bouldering at the wall in Inverness and all the current clamour on Facebook for better indoor climbing facilities, I find it strange that all these 'climbers' aren't actually doing it out in the real world.  The truth is, you're more likely to meet climbers from Sheffield at Torridon than from Inverness.

Rare sunshine on Wild is the Wind at Reiff in the Woods (Pic: Richie Betts)

Closer to Inverness, where the weather can be a bit more reliable, there's still quite a bit of half-decent stuff in Easter Ross that I'm pretty sure 90% of boulderers using Inverness wall will never have heard of.  Having moved out of Inverness to the sticks near Muir of Ord I've spent a fair bit of time exploring these esoteric delights this season and I can't help but think that some of them deserve more people knowing about them.  The vast majority of it isn't hard to find out about, with topos, pics and videos all online.  And if you fancy some development, there's still stuff out there, if you're willing to do some walking and cleaning.

I'd already visited Scatwell quite a few times before moving house, but it's now very much my local boulder.  The Richie Betts classic 7As of Road to Domestos (bunched up slapping into graunchy mantel) and Scatwell Massacre (scary heel-toe or biiig jump?) pave the way to the Mike Lee 7B crimp-fest The Catch.  Highly reccomended.

The Domestos graunch.

Back out towards Contin, on a lone block underneath Glenmarksie trad crag is the singular attraction of Super Beetle, a great 6C crimp rail traverse into an exciting rounded top-out, another Betts number.  Cross the Meig dam back into Strathconon and you've got the Meig Boulders, developed by Rich Betts (see the theme?) and Nick Carter.  I need to go back and give them a spring clean before getting stuck into them for a good local after work circuit, but I did Nick's 6B The Lone Ranger on a flying visit and it was a little corker. Here's Rich showing the way:

On the way back from an abortive soggy Am Fasgadh session a while back I visited Inchbae for the first time and did the crag classic Long Winning Streak.  Not a bad spot.

Suffice to say, I've never met anyone else at any of these places.

This weekend I was up Strathrusdale (where?) and did two really cool granite slab problems that I cleaned up a while back. Probably a 6B and a 6C, but who knows.  Good slab problems, forest bouldering and granite are all rare in these parts, so I was pretty chuffed.  When I first found boulders up there a few years ago I did the problem in the video below, and there's more to be done for the keen.

Somewhere in Easter Ross from Gareth Marshall on Vimeo.

 No-one will ever find them, which is a shame, but that's Scottish bouldering for you.  Oh yeah, I forgot about all the keen climbers clamouring for a new training venue in Inverness.  They'll be straight there....

Different

It's hard to know what was different on the last go.  Sometimes things just click.

I'd been there for well over an hour already, my toes starting to freeze in the March night, my fingertips starting to burn. I existed with the boulder in a glowing bubble of white in the inky darkness, spotlit by two lamps and my headtorch, the woods and roaring river beyond forgotten.  I'd never been so close to success, but with each failed attempt I new the window of opportunity was getting smaller: the accumulation of skin loss, fatigue and battered motivation all taking their toll.

This was my fourth session here in two weeks: two on weekends, two on weeknights with lamps. After each one I'd come away with a glimmer of hopeful progress: a new hold reached, a shift of weight. The unknowns becoming known.  I'd occasionally tried the first few moves before, but was no-where near making or sticking the crux move.  It's hard to say exactly what had changed, but building a board at home probably helped.  Tonight's task was to bring them all together in one: a series of static points of contact linked through movement, timing, balance and power. Now, after the umpteenth crash back to the pads, the clock was ticking and I was gearing up for another defeated retreat.

One more go.  This one really will be the last.  I even said it out loud to the darkness beyond my island of light.  "One more go".  Sat on the pads, chalked and ready, a thought crossed my mind. Every time I've done a problem I've found hard I've tried to work out what made the difference on that final attempt.  More often than not I couldn't tell you what it was. Better accuracy? More power? Maybe it's more mental than physical: focus, desire. Sometimes things just click.

On the final go last night something clicked again. A millimeter shift of body weight? An intake of breath? Perhaps. Suddenly I found myself  outside my bubble of torchlight, dark and alone, and standing on top of The Catch at Scatwell.

Dancing in the darkness

Creating

Very little to report on the climbing front of late.  There seemed to be no respite from the January storms, so when the boulders weren't wet from rain they were wet from snow. Not to worry though, I've been busy creating things:

The nearly-finished shed board.  Not long after I took this photo I boarded over more of the rafter space where the campus rungs are to make a bit more height.  The remaining holds are waiting on a delivery of more T-nuts and bolts before they can go on, and then with the addition of a few more shit screw-ons for feet it'll be done.

I spent most of today cleaning up this bit of Easter Ross esoterica to produce a couple of just off-vertical granite crystal teetering beauties.  I've not tried them yet as they were still damp post-clean and that wasn't going to change in today's watery sunshine, but I think they might be tricky.