Torridon Diaries #2

Saturday was Goat Crag with Tess, first time up there for ages, and first time on routes for about a month. Moving house and friends getting married play hell with consistent climbing. Not that I'm complaining, it's one of life's balancing acts that I'll forever be battling. I felt rusty but got stuck into Fidgy Muckers, one of the newer routes from Ian Taylor at the righthand end. Managed to throw it away a few times from the last moves, only to realise I was making it way harder by using a duff sequence. Too tired by then though. Classic Marshall puntering.

Back to Torridon on Sunday with Sarah to meet family Betts. More folk bouldering there than I've ever seen.  It's good to see the quality is being recognised but there's definitely a different atmosphere to the place when it's not just one or two mates. Guess we Highlanders are pretty spoiled.

Despite the time of year it was proper hot; tops off hot, slippery slopers hot. I consigned myself to only trying Malc's in the short spells when it clouded over and a breeze picked up. No more progress: I either need to find a way to keep a foot on for the big move or do something altogether different. The fat pebble out right keeps luring and trapping me, but there's a feeling that it could be the way. I think I need a session by myself in good nick to do some experimenting.

Rich was fresh from repeating Dan Varian's Days Go By at Kishorn the day before so happy to potter about in the heat and put chalk on problems for me. I'd not done Dandy Don's Arête or Swamp Monster Sit on the Ship so pleased to do them, then put the cherry on the cake by doing Put a Sock in it on the back of the Celtic Boulder, which I'd flailed at 2 weeks ago. Good nick and more skin this time and it felt better boning the teeny holds like a champ.

It's a rare day when Torridon allows success so a cheeky bottle of Timothy Taylor's Landlord was my reward when I got home. Livin' the dream...

Torridon Diaries #1

The illness subsided and I dragged my newly emaciated body out West for the first Torridon bouldering session of the season.  An early start for the Betts on a Daddy Day Pass meant for in-situ weather reporting as me, Blair and Nona sped through the Contin-Garve Wormhole.  News of morning dampness improving temporarily slowed the charge at Tarvie Services for a low-grade 'cappuccino' and high-grade fruit slice - the swings and roundabouts of Highland catering.

The aim for the day was to get back on Malc's Arete, and as a bare minimum to reach the high point I was reaching at the end of last season.  I did this, at least, but the top still feels distant.  I was hoping to point "Lochaber's 2nd best all-rounder" Blair at Malc's to glean some short person's beta, but we both spent the morning floundering from the slopey shelf.  Now at the stage of trying to improvise moves as the big throw seems unlikely.  Great nick until the sun came out.  Meanwhile Rich entertained crag-dog Bronners and show-boated on the Ship.  Welcome back to Torridon.

Rich then took us up to Another Level, a cool wall on one of the of tiers above the classic boulder jumble that he'd recently developed.  Twiglets, possibly the best 6A in Torridon stretches between hidden pockets and breaks left of Rich's new 7a+ Worry Bomb.  Interesting to see the shorter Blair's intricate beta for Rich's fewer long-man moves on this.  I'll hopefuly be somewhere in between but didn't really try it, too busy unearthing One Man Mexican Wave, a rare dyno amidst Torridon's techy walls.

Skin was starting to wear thin but the ego was in search of a tick so I looked out Dan Varian's new '7a' Put a Sock in It.  Classic Torridon technicality linking two teeny crimps from an off-balance ledge.  Close but no cigar.  Got home and watched Rich's vid of him doing it for beta but could never do it his Mr Spaghetti-Arms way.  Just going to have to bear down on the left crimper like a champ.

Boulder season begins...

Breathing Space

It's not often that you're forced to stop everything, to take a step back and let things be.

I can't pretend that I've enjoyed the last four days of being housebound by a viral infection, never more than a few slipper-shuffles from the loo.  Oh!  The glamour!  It struck at a fun time too, a week after Sarah and I had moved up to the lovely new place we're renting in the bright lights of Inverness, all our belongings hidden in boxes, clothes in piles on the floor, no local GP, and worse, no bed.  I've spent most of the week off work, suffering manfully, of course, and am now definitely clawing my way back out of the malaise.

My day to day life is normally very heavily based around physical exertion and discomfort: my job as an Ecologist means being away from home for four days a week, of which three are out in the field, all over Scotland.  We're often covering big distances in the hills or on very rough ground (interestingly, the roughest bit of land that I've ever had the misfortune to try to walk/wade/lollop across is in the Central Belt, miles from any 'wilderness'), or squirming and worming between prickly thickets of forestry to access specific survey points (think of trying to walk through a very tightly planted Christmas Tree farm).  We're normally carrying heavy loads of survey kit and the weather is almost never a factor in our plans; rain or shine, hot or cold, the work needs to be done.  Then I come home on a Thursday night, sort out my horrible kit and then have three days to catch up with the rest of life, as well as trying to go climbing, training for climbing, and running.  I've managed to engineer myself a lifestyle that doesn't really allow room for illness, and the machine just keeps turning week after week.

So when a few days of sickness struck, it was quite nice to be forced to do nothing and an opportunity to have a think about what I want to be doing for the next wee while.

First off, I decided that I was going to pull out of doing the OMM this year.  Training has been going OK, and in fact I'm probably in the best form I've been in for a while thanks to a summer of marching up hill with an Ecologist's rucksack all over the Highlands, but I'm just not motivated this year.  I've done it every year since 2004, and with Duncan Steen since 2006.  Each year we've been getting better, somehow managing to finish in the top ten in the the Elite Class for the last three, but this year I felt like I was entering it out of tradition, because October means the OMM, it's what I do.  It wasn't because I was looking forward to the whole race experience.  So, I told Dunc, who took it well (he'd replaced me within a few hours!) and I sprawled in the luxurious pressure-free month I have ahead.

So, Autumn is normally running season, and my climbing goes down the pan, but now I'm going to reverse it.  The rest of Autumn and Winter will be spent exploiting my new proximity to the North West's boulders and hopefully will see a few good battles on sport projects.  In the short term, I'll try to get as much sport climbing mileage as possible as I'm planning to head to Spain for a week in November.

Just need to shake off the last of this vile pox...

The Turn

Yesterday I read a post on Farcebook by one of the Glenmore Reindeer Centre herders saying she'd seen snow on Braeriach.  If nothing else, not even the howling gale that kept waking me up last night, it's a sign that the seasons are turning.  There are still a few optimistic swallows hanging about in Aviemore but their days here are numbered, and the big skeins of migrating geese I saw this week mean it's their turn now.

The changing seasons generally mean a change of focus for me - Autumn brings more running in preparation for this year's OMM, and cooler weather means more bouldering.  On the bouldering front, priority number 1 for this winter season is the same as the last few: Malc's Arete in Torridon.  By the time the Spring warmth was arriving at the end of last season I was starting to feel pretty close, so hopefully some sessions in good conditions this time round will seal the deal.  Even if Malc's remains a dream, there's still so much to do in Torridon, including a load that I scouted while working up there this summer and all the stuff Richie and Co. have been doing on the South side.

It's usual in the Highlands for late Summer to be a bit of a wash out, with warm, humid and midgy conditions the bain of many a climbing plan.  This year followed a similar pattern, although not to quite the extent as the last few.  At least this year I had a few days out and managed to tick off some quality routes, here's a rather dull summary, as much for my memory as for your interest:

• Sandwiched between the two sessions I had at Brin (previous post) Sarah and I went for a Cairngorm walk, aiming for a swim in Loch Avon on a scorching day.  On the way past Hell's Lum I persuaded her to give me a belay on one of Jules' wee slab routes, Two Little Devils.  As a big fan of the granite slab it was most pleasant to climb one with amazing gear all the way.  The E4 next door looked like a very different proposition and will have to wait....

Blue sky and bad hair

• On the bolts front I managed to do the morpho boulder-in-the-sky Cloudburst at Goat Crag.  A good one to have done as I slowly work my way through the easier routes here.  What's next?  Steve and I later departed for Loch Tollaidh where he closed the account he'd opened on In The Pink a couple of years previously, and he cruised it.  It was his last Scottish route before moving to NZ for a year. 
• Moy lost it's perma-dry title after Tess and I got caught in the mother of all rain storms.  Waterfalls down routes, not cool.  Before the misery I'd been having a good day, doing Cloak and Dagger and The Herring for the first time and getting up Ticks... in a oner, the first time I'd been back on it since redpointing it last summer.
• I finally met up with Andy Hyslop, one of the very few Aviemore residents that actually climb, and had a day at Reiff.  Mis-reading a guidebook (plus an innacurate topo) meant I climbed a Severe (Plaything) thinking it was an E1 (Gussetbuster).  I thought I must have been going well as it felt really easy, then I re-read the book and ate my humble pie. Oops.  
• Getting up to date, last Saturday I headed up to the hot crag of the summer, Ian and Tess' Creag Rodha Mor, aka Super Crag.  Tess was my guide, which was great as finding it is fairly involved, plus it eliminated all the usual faff of working out where to abb from and where all the routes go.  Trying to warm up by seconding a notoriously tricky E3 didn't do much for my confidence, but I managed to keep it together on the epic voyage of Mega-flake and the pumpy and then airy Gaunnisimo.  It was great to finally get embroiled in some committing climbing, after so much sport and cragging.  Psyched to get back next Summer when I've got some trad momentum.

South from Super Crag

And finally...  We all know that climbing doesn't really make good spectating, least of all trad climbing, and least of all slab climbing.  However, when I went into Beinn a Bhuird the other month I filmed my wee slab route.  It was mainly to get footage of me falling off, but I didn't.  I edited it together anyway, mainly just to remind myself  how gripped I was at the top.  It's refusing to embed in full size, so here it is:

Kissy Klub - Cairngorm Slab from Gareth Marshall on Vimeo.

Courting Controversy - Brin Rock

As a Highland rock climber my primary goal is trad climbing - onsight, adventurous, wild and remote.  All the other climbing I do I often think of as training or I do because weather, conditions or a lack of partners mean trad is out of the question.  Living in the Highlands means these last three factors are often at large: it rains a fair bit, it's often cold, and there aren't many climbers about, which means in a year I end up doing more bouldering and sport climbing than trad. And that's great, because as well as the well-known wealth of brilliant trad climbing we have up here, there's also a lot of very good bouldering, and due to the hard work of a few dedicated folk, an expanding wealth of excellent sport crags.  

The realistic truth is that if I want to be a rock climber in the Highlands I want sport crags, and this means I need people getting out there with drills and bolts, doing the dirty work (Don't ask me, I don't know my arse from my Hilti).  This also means you need crags; crags that are suitable for bolting; that aren't historically or ecologically sensitive; that don't have an established no-bolt ethic.  Coming from a tree-hugging long-term viewpoint, I don't think we should be bolting things that might one day make good trad routes for a fitter, stronger, bolder generation.

And this is my dilemma.

There's a word that's been spoken quietly by the Highland scene for the last year or so: Brin.  Brin Rock is a crag high on a hill in Strathnairn, steep, south-facing, schist.  Best known by climbers these days for the boulders at the foot of the hill, but the crags muster a few trad routes from the 70s and 80s.  Nowadays these routes get very little, if any, traffic.  In the last few years, and unknown to each other, two men visited Brin - Andy Wilby and Guy Robertson.  They both saw the crag from opposite ends of the spectrum. Andy has been responsible for a large number of the sport routes in the Inverness and North West areas, including the now super-popular Moy Rock, and he saw a large amount of steep, fairly blank looking rock on an unpopular and forgotten buttress - ripe for sport development and rejuvenation.  At the same place, Guy saw the potential for a handful of hard, bold trad routes and put up an E6 of his own called Astroceltic Soundsystem.  Not knowing that Guy had climbed his route, (parhaps the moral of this tale is that more open communication in the secretive Scottish scene is needed) Andy and another Inverness local, Dave Douglas, started bolting the crag, staying away from the original trad routes.  When they found out about Guy's route they chopped the bolts that encroached on his line, but continued bolting elsewhere on the crag.  And that's pretty much where we are now.  The bolts are still there, and the crag is growing in popularity with a 'retro-concensus' seeming to emerge.  

I'd stayed away from the crag, not really sure what I made of it.  The sudden appearance of a load of new sport routes on a crag near home (including rumours of a 3* 7a) got the short-termist climber in me excited, but the more philosophical (idealistic?) long-termist part of me couldn't help but be concerned about seeing established trad venues being bolted.  If this crag now, what next?  With the surge in popularity of climbing you can't help but wonder what someone without the knowledge of the history and ethics of British climbing might want to bolt, and will the bolting of venues like Brin just encourage gung-ho bolting?  

In these debates people often say 'it makes a better sport crag than trad crag', or 'if bolting makes the crag more popular, then bolt it'.  I don't hold with these arguments at all - rock is rock, a natural resource.  It doesn't have amenity value or human worth.  If a crag isn't popular, so what?  Does it have to be?  In the geological time-scale of rocks, climbing has been around for the merest fraction of a fraction of time, what gives us the right to drill bits of metal into them just because we, humans alive today, aren't good enough at climbing to get up them without drilling?  On the other side, I've no-doubt that some climbers could do most of the sport routes I've ever done on trad, so should those bolts be chopped?

Anyway, enough cod-philosophy.  I felt like I had to go to see for myself, so went up on Friday morning with Nick.  To be honest, I still don't know where I stand.  I'm simultaneously impressed with the amount of work Andy and Dave have put into developing the crag (access paths through the dense vegetation, an in-situ rope up the scramble to the base of the crag and good bolting), and impressed with Guy for trad climbing up a bloody scary-looking steep wall.  On that sun-baked session I warmed up on a nice 6c called Captains of Crush but failed to redpoint the rumoured 3* 7a One and Only.  I was loathe to admit it, but it is a brilliant sport route, sustained and unlikely-looking, long moves between good holds, and no obvious gear placements.  I felt I had unfinished business up there.  Rich recommended a return visit on Sunday morning so I went back up to see if I could seal the deal.  It was a lot cooler, with more of a breeze, and I managed to get it done on the first redpoint.  Rich then ticked The Pink Wall, a great-looking, rather steep 7b(+?), and I surprised myself by doing Snake in the Grass, the 7a+ variation into One and Only, which, again, climbed brilliantly.

I had hoped the crag would be crap, with crap routes, a crap view and crap rock, and I'd  feel justified in not really wanting the bolts to be there, but the truth is that it's pretty good, it's close to Inverness and has a spread of grades that other local crags don't really have.  But, the question is, if this is OK, what will the uber-wad trad climbers of the future have to climb?

Reverting to Type

The distant chattering of a ring ouzel blends with the bubbling froth of the nearby burn.  The air is full with the sweet sun-warmed scent peculiar to the plants at this sub-montane habitat - matt grass, crowberry and blaeberry all dominating over the lower altitude heaths. I'm here at last. I've thought about this place a lot in the last year.  Ever since I first came here it's been nibbling away in the back of my mind as a place to return to, to explore.

Despite being a Cairngorms-based climber with a preference for slabs, I'd not been in the Cairngorms once yet in 2012, summer or winter, and not climbed any routes that I would describe as proper slabs. So after a few good days in the North West over the last weekends, including some steep crack grovelling at Ardmair and a redpoint of the mega-steep Snowflake at Goat Crag, it felt like time to change up and do something completely different. 

Not a slab: Abbing for a stuck wire on Space Monkeys, Ardmair. 

While working on the RSPB's Montane Bird Survey last summer I had the good  fortune to work on Beinn a' Bhuird, one of the more remote Cairngorm hills.  The size of the area we were surveying meant an overnight stay, but I couldn't be bothered to lug a tent up with me.  After a bit of research I found out about the Smith-Winram bivuac under Dividing Buttress in Coire an Dubh Lochan, and after a day's work dropped down into the coire to find it.  On approaching the crag I couldn't help but notice the smooth granite slabs set below the buttress itself and comparisons to the Lower Slab at Hell's Lum started to spring to mind.  Closer inspection provided all I needed to know - gently angled, compact, perfect Cairngorm granite, an obvious line of  blankness between two cracks.  Later I quizzed Julian Lines, the master of remote Cairngorm slabs, and he didn't know of any routes there.  I vowed to return with rock shoes.

Dividing Buttress, Coire an Dubh Lochan.
The slab is bottom centre, left  of the dark wet patch and above the boulders.

A year passed.  Winter came and went, then the rains arrived and the Cairngorms were out of bounds while the North West was in drought.  The slab remained in the back of my mind but other things got in the way - not the least finding someone else happy to bike and walk the 13km to indulge my twisted fantasy.  In the end I decided to go it alone and yesterday found myself under the slab at last.  Part of  me expected that over the year my memory would have changed the shape or angle or size of the slab - that on my return it wouldn't live up to my hopes.  Fortunetely, I'd remembered it about right.  

On my own, I wasn't really sure what I was going to acheive.  I didn't want to top-rope the route without a good try from the ground first, but could't really justify going for it without at least the vague knowledge that it might be climbable.  In the end I abbed the line, giving it a wee clean as I went.  Then I pulled up the rope (no jumping to safety!)  and after up-downing the start a few times to remind myself how slabs work, took a deep breath and committed.

A dodgy video still of the action.

I got it first try, which was great, but it did leave me feeling a bit puzzled.  It was definitely easier than I'd hoped it might be - I'd secretly been hoping for a new Firestone - and I couldn't work out if I had just pulled  an amazing climbing performance out of the bag (I'll admit, frictiony slabs are probably my strongest climbing area) or if the route just wasn't very hard.  I think the slab is a degree or two shallower than Firestone, and allied with slightly courser granite, there were more tiny edges and rugosities to play with.  Regardless, however, it was still a 17m solo flash of a beautiful piece of granite, which is more than I'd expected when I got out of bed yesterday.  I'm calling it Kissy Klub after everyone's favourite electro producer Kissy Sell Out, who's mixes have been keeping psyche levels high for the last few years (he was on the ipod on the way in and out yesterday), and, based on other routes I've done that are a bit like this, tentatively giving it E3 5b, but I'll be honest, I don't really know.  You could place a runner in one of the cracks right at the top, but am not sure if it would be worth it.

The Smith-Winram Slab.  Kissy Klub goes between the obvious cracks in the centre

Barrathon and Beyond

Having lived in Scotland for almost 10 years and never been out to the Western Isles I'd started to feel that a trip was well overdue.  I've been out on climbing trips to Pabbay and Mingulay before, with quick overnight stops in Castlebay on Barra, but the full 130 mile trip up through the Uists, Harris and Lewis was still undone.  Sarah had heard about the half-marathon on Barra - the brilliantly named Barrathon - which seemed like a good starting point for an adventure, and luckily we managed to get an entry in the 45 minutes it took to fill up.  So, we booked ferry tickets, did some training, packed Sarah's battered old Ford Escort and headed west to Oban.  


Race-day dawned damp and breezy, and the prospect of leaving our cosy wee tent on the Vatersay machair in short shorts and skimpy vest wasn't all that appealing.  On the start line the cloud slowly started to lift and  drizzle dwindled as the local priest (local celeb from the BBC's An Island Parish, no less) fired the starting pistol and 1hr29minutes of angst and suffering began.  It was only my second half marathon (last one in 2004, that's how much road running I do) and although I'm probably much fitter now I only improved on my time by 10 minutes, but it earned me 8th place.  Also, it's a pretty hilly course, with a brilliantly long climb up the side of Heaval at 11miles, just when you don't want it.


Disciplined Sarah had stuck to a training plan and was aiming for sub-2hrs.  She was a bit miffed to miss it by 2 minutes, but given the hilly course I'd let her have it, especially given that it's the longest continual run she's done (mountain marathons don't count, it's all walking!).  I'm really proud of her dedication.
The next day we went to find Breaker Wall, a nice crag on Barra that's been fairly recently developed (info on Colin Moody's site here) and after some scary sheath-cutting abseiling (my fault) did a brilliant E2 called Druth's Groove and a nice aptly named Diff called Escape Route under the watchful eyes of a rather bemused grey seal.  

Druth's Groove, Breaker Wall, Barra

We laugh afterwards: 50m ab rope soon becomes 2x25m ab ropes.

From Barra to Eriskay, to South Uist, to Benbecula, to North Uist, to Berneray - big skies, empty spaces, sandy beaches, historic sites, museums, tea, cake, not much exercise.  These islands felt a bit like the land that time forgot, still following the seasonal crofting cycles - small houses dotted across the landscape, grey, pebble-dashed, functional.  Even the occasional nods to the modern world, like the military base and airfield on Benbecula, felt old and impoverished, like looking at archive footage of the 70s and 80s.

Sarah and the Sea

Eventually we docked at Leverburgh on South Harris, a much more familiar (and much preferred) landscape of hills and rock.  A quick run up Clisham the next day then off to the tiny island of Bernera off Lewis' west coast.  Here we found our favourite beach of the trip at Bostadh, where an Iron Age village had been hidden in the dunes for centuries, to be exposed to our inquisitive eyes by an Atlantic storm in 1993 then re-buried to preserve.  We found Creag Liam nearby and I mustered some psyche for my first ever deep water solo - Mini Tsunami, 4a, 20m, S2 (what ever that means), first done by the heroic Jules Lines.  Suffice to say, getting to the bottom of the route was far harder than 4a, and you really wouldn't want to fall off from much higher than the first 10 metres (the shaking started when a hold broke at about 15 metres).  An intense, deep experience, that will live on for a long time.

Part way up Mini-Tsunami at Creag Liam, Lewis.