First Rock Trip Of The Season 23/03/11-24/03/11

After last week's good session at Clova, Greg, Mhairi and I decided to head away for a quick two day bouldering trip. As usual, weather dictated the venue and we decided to head up to Cummingston and the surrounding areas as Greg's new "Bouldering Scotland" guide has an awesome Inverness area.

After driving up on Tuesday night we had a long day shredding our skin on the sandy beach at Cummingston and did a circuit of the shore from the right-hand side all the way across to the cave on the left. There were some awesome problems in all sectors and in between bouts of failing strength I managed to take some photos, it's such a photogenic venue with the stone beach and sea.

As skin and strength failed we decided to end the day with some tradding on some of the great routes. I climbed "Centre" and "Left" which are both VS but great fun and with some great climbing. It was great to be back on the sharp end and working out the moves without having a spongy mat to soften a short fall, feeling relatively strong which is great and I'm pretty psyched for the upcoming trad season.

After a stunning sunset and an extended exit from the crag via the playpark, we headed back to Aviemore and had a feast before spending some time sanding/super-glueing and doing general finger maintenance!

On Thursday we headed towards Inverness and across to Ruthven Boulder. Psyche was built on the drive as Brin Rocks looked amazing, incredibly steep but perhaps it is deceptive; will have to go back and see anyway! Ruthven is very much a boulder and it's a great place to climb over looking the little loch and surrounding hills. Again sore skin played a part as some of the gneiss is incredibly sharp; routes such as "Cheese Grater" and "Shreddies" give some indication! However the wonders of super-glue and finger tape are very impressive and we had another good day enjoying working around the boulder getting more mileage before heading back down to Edinburgh.

It was a great trip and mega-psyched for a summer of trad and more new places!

Glen Clova Again 18/03/10

Back up to Clova today with Greg and Mhairi; totally loving the bouldering at the moment! The weather was great again for most of the day, and we enjoyed some of the quality boulders in the Red Craig's area. I was psyched to tick Peel Session SS which goes at V3, font 6c and Red Nose, V4 6b. Greg and Mhairi were also crushing. Another good day out at Clova, my skin is feeling it now though!

Kyloe In, Out, Shake It All About 14/03/11

I was back down at Kyloe today with Greg and Andy. We started off in the woods and we all had a good day ticking or making progress on projects, I was working Monty Python's Direct which is a great little project and it's good to have something to work on. After some lunch we headed out of the woods and had a look around to see what was dry, after scoping the crag we settled on a little cave which had a good traverse and a snappy little problem pulling through the roof which was quite smeggy so we headed left and did a great little problem; The Saint before continuing left for more slabness of The Fat Lady Sang. This was an apt name; as I came off from above the mantel on the slabby madness and slid down onto the mats! Slight twist of the ankle but it seems fine now which is good. More climbing later this week hopefully! Bring it on :)

Kyloe In 11/03/11

Today I headed down to Kyloe In with Andy, Greg and Sean. It was my first time to this classic Northumberland venue and I was suitably impressed!

It's a really cool place and the climbing was amazing, everyone had a good day climbing wise and we had a good laugh to top it off. Sean kindly let me play with his lens and lights when he wasn't using them and this was a lot of fun, Sean obviously got some incredible photos as usual and I was quite pleased with some of my shots too.

A weekend of healing the fingertip skin and watching the weather before maybe some last winter routes or more sunny rock climbing to start off the summer. Winter seems to have made a reappearance today though, there was about an inch of snow lying on the ground when we woke up!

Glen Clova Bouldering 06/03/11

With a stunning weather forecast Greg, Pete and I headed up to Glen Clova to sample some of the bouldering there. There was still some snow road-side on the way down the glen but the boulders are on the south facing side of the glen and were in great condition. We headed up to The Hollow area and once we found the boulders we had a great day sampling the rhyolite delights.

We did a variety of problems which were all good fun and didn't require much cleaning. I will definitely be heading back up here soon for some more bouldering and tradding, Clova is such a great venue!

Sea Cliffs With Bolts 04/03/11

Today I headed up towards Aberdeen with Greg, Pete, Mike, and Dave. We headed to a crag near Earnsheugh called Orchestra Cave which is home to some exceedingly steep sport routes. Unfortunately the easiest route that I had been hoping to get on was totally soaked and so I ended up taking photos with Pete which was good fun. The guys were making good progress on Dangleberries which looked exceedingly hard and was very steep!

Back on zee rock ja 03/03/11

With a bit of uni catching up to do I had put winter climbing out of my head for a while but I have now pretty much caught up and with some sunshine forecast and little rain over the past week or so Greg, Sean, Tim and I headed up to Dunkeld for some rock action for the first time this season.

We went to Polney to start and Sean and Tim played on Chopping Block but said it was a bit wet. Greg and I wandered about seeking out dry lines and had a fun time climbing mossy moist cracks on some easy routes before we decided it was a bit slimey and so headed up to Upper Cave for the guys to do some stamina on Hamish and I took some photos. It was great to be back out on rock and so relaxing!