The plan was to go up north west and then come back south east for a few days when the weather got bad until I couldn't justify climbing any longer and really needed to get some work done. So on Wednesday of last week I headed over to Scott's in preparation for an early start for the drive the next morning. I awoke to Diane's ever fantastic cooking and exemplary care for guests, and got on the road soon after.
Day 1: Reiff and Stac Pollaidh
We arrived at Reiff in the morning and walked to Roinn a'Mhill (the nearest of the crags) and quickly got to warming up on a few low grade solo's. All the routes barring xyles were on very low angled slabs, and in the glorious sunshine they made for a relaxing adventure.
1) Moonjelly (VD)
2) Xyles (S)
3) Octopus' Garden (VD)
4) Bedbug (D)
5) Scurvey (VD)
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| Moonjelly (VD) |
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| Me Leading on Immaculate Deception (E1 5b) |
Next It was my turn to step up to the plate, and after looking at a few of the routes in the area, the one that looked best was Immaculate deception. The route follows the path of a thin diagonal crack which doesn't take gear as well as it looks from the ground. After a couple of little difficulties lower down I was soon at the top.
Having visited this particular part of Reiff twice now, I feel like I've pretty much done all of the decent routes (that are within my ability) after a quick foray around into the less appealing bouldering cliff, we made the decision to leave Reiff at about 2 pm and make a quick ascent of Jack the Ripper on Stac Pollaidh before the sun went down.
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| Sunshine on Reiff |
After getting a tad lost on all the winding roads we eventually made it to the Stac Pollaidh car park a little later than planned, We packed very light and blasted up to the base of No. 1 Buttress in half the time predicted by the guidebook. For those of you who regularly read my blog, you will know that Jack the Ripper was one of the 5 routes I wanted to get done most this year and so this route was my primary reason for coming up north. Take it from me it certainly lived up to the hype.
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| Stac Pollaidh - I Love this mountain! |
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| Looking up the route |
The first and easiest pitch (4b) follows the same line as November Groove (a route I did last year). After climbing through a nice curving crack the climbing becomes pretty blocky and uninteresting, but thankfully this was just the first pitch. Scott then stepped up to lead the second pitch (5a). By following the description in the Gary Latter guidebook we ended up in a bit of a mess with route finding and rope drag, which unfortunately slowed our pace down. After all was sorted out we had only gained about 10 feet.
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| The view from the first (or maybe second) belay ledge |
After working out where the route was supposed to go I took the rest of the pitch, which was fine technical slab climbing on rock as rough as gritstone. Some high steps and technical moves later I had made it to the belay ledge and made my anchor with as few cams as possible as I knew I'd need them for the next section.
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| Scott coming up the second Pitch |
The 3rd and last pitch of Jack the Ripper is the hardest of the route, and potentially the finest individual pitch of climbing I've ever done, The climbing is very sustained with successive 5b moves for about 20 metres. It's also a lot steeper than it first appears, thankfully though very well protected and not too strenuous as at most points it is possible to bridge out to rest and place gear. As a whole I might go as far as saying that the climb was better than the Needle. This may only be down to that I didn't lead any of the spectacular pitches on the Needle, regardless Jack the Ripper is well worth the trip!
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| simply the best |
We descended just as the sun was going down and made it back to the car just as darkness fell. All in all an amazing day of climbing capped with one of the best routes I've done
Day 2: Ardmair
we awoke the next morning with greyer skies and less positive looking weather, while the skies may not have been so optimistic it still didn't look like it would rain, so we decided to head to Ardmair as it was the nearest crag to where we'd camped. In Scott's words Ardmair is "the best crag I've never visited" It certainly lived up to this, with many compelling and steep lines and of course the famous roof crack of Burning Desire (E5 6b).
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| Burning Desire, on of the coolest rock features out there |
We began the day with sends of Siesta and Terrace crack (Both VS 4c). I lead siesta which follows up a nice well protected ramp to a bold and slightly overhanging finish on large holds. The climb was a tad wet in places.
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| Scott on Terrace Crack |
After these sends we decided to split off and solo a few lines to get some more mileage in. Scott decided to free solo microlight (HS 4b) while I went off and sent both small is possible (VD) and The way it is (D). Scott soon found himself high up on Microlight and a little stuck, without a rope he didn't want to commit to the next moves (which after I lead the route were significantly harder than 4b) perhaps this was due to our lack of tape and not wanting to yard up on skin shredding jams. Regardless I had to swing into action and rescue Scott off the route. After this I decided not to solo the route as I had originally planned and instead to lead it. Admittedly I'm not the best jammer in the world but it still felt very sandbagged, I guess you live and learn.
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| Stuck on Microlight |
The next line that appealed to me was that of Parapente (E1 5b), which could be thought of in two sections. The bottom half follows a thin finger crack with some cool mantling to get onto the mid way ledge. Then it follows a corner with a really high step being the crux.
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| Just before the crux on Parapente |
Now we headed further back downhill to sample some of the other routes. I had spotted a really nice E2 that I liked the look of, but it was now Scott's turn to lead so he decided to go for what we thought was HVS, we however ended up new routing up a really mossy corner which was a funny experience in itself as I ended up emptying handfuls of moss and plant life onto Scott on his hanging belay below, with him all the while shouting complaints and insults back at me.
After topping out and seeing that the sun was slowly descending beneath the horizon I decided I wasn't really feeling the E2 and thought I'd leave it till next time. Hopefully I'll also send Burning Desire too!
That night we headed back to Kingussie as the weather was forecast to get really bad for a few days so there was no reason to stay in the area.
Day 3: Dunkeld Cave Crag and Newtyle Quarry
We awoke the next morning to see that the weather wasn't very good anywhere in Scotland, and it looked least like raining over in the east. Using this information we decided to head for Dunkeld. After spending about 40 minutes walking around in glorious sunshine trying to find the crag, rain started to fall. Predictably this dampened our spirits (I find my climbing psyche scales with weather). While waiting for the rain to stop and the rock to dry we spent our time placing cams and nuts in trees and joking about how bombproof the gear was.
The first line we got on was purely climbed for its name. Fuck Face is a 2 pitch HVS first climbed by the legendary Dougal Haston. Having seen the length of the pitches I decided I wouldn't bother with the hassle of a multi-pitch venture and instead just do it in a oner. After pulling through the crux of the lower half I discovered the upper section was soaking wet. I soon discovered that chalking my hands was a drop in the ocean compared to the volume of water on route and that it would be scary no matter how much chalk I used. Eventually I manned up and powered through. This unfortunately is supposed to be one of the drier routes at the crag and that it was wet meant almost everything else would be too. So the decision was made to swap venues to somewhere we could climb regardless of the weather conditions: Newtyle Quarry.
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| The climb that I'll only name once |
Newtyle is a very unique place to climb. The climbing itself is on slate which is almost unheard of outside of the welsh quarries, and in one single area is sport, trad and dry tooling. All at a very high level. Scott had told me about this E2 at Newtyle which I was pretty keen to go and have a look at.
The climb was called Spandau Ballet it follows a very thin crack line up a slate slab. The climbing is very technical and thin on small positive edges. As long as you have plenty of small gear it is also very well protected. This is the description of the climb from UKC:
"A fine but desperate sandbag up the obvious and enticing thin crack. A hard 5c move off the ground leads to varied climbing up the crack with a hard 6a move at it's top. Above this step left then trend right to finish."
For me the crux was the very first moved which involved a huge high step onto a sloping edge and then pulling myself onto the ledge before the prominent crack using almost nothing with my hands. In addition to the technical difficulty of this move it was completely unprotected and directly above a thorn bush, so naturally I felt motivated not to fall off!
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| This doesn't really do the line Justice. It's so much cooler in real life! |
The rest of the climbing was technical but steady, a short shower half way up the route meant I had to wait a little while on a grassy ledge for it to pass, the slate becomes even more difficult to climb in the wet! Thankfully due to it being a slab I didn't have to worry too much about getting pumped, definitely my style of climbing. Soon I was past the difficulties and I'd onsighted my second E2! Stoked, but seeing as this was supposedly sandbagged, now I really feel I have to get on E3 soon.
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| Making progress up the slabs |
We ended the day by heading into "the tube" a dank and wet hole in the earth which extends for about 30 to 40 metres, hanging from the roof at regular intervals are in situ quickdraws. In this cave are some of the hardest dry tooling routes in Scotland, probably the hardest. So I was happy to just watch Scott do his thing and power up the huge steep roof.
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| Scott pumped after having climbed "Fast and Furious" M10 |
Day 4: Glen Nevis
Originally our plan for this day was to head out towards Ballater, but thankfully we decided against this as the forecast was significantly more favourable towards the west. Instead we decided Poll dubh would be a great shout.
Upon arrival the sun was shining, climbable rock surrounded me on all sides and the largest (and coolest) mountain in the UK was only a (giants) stones throw away. I couldn't be happier! The day as a whole was really cool, especially when you considered that down in the valley we were all climbing in shorts and t-shirts and then up on Ben Nevis the ice was still in condition and people were freezing away whilst climbing. A very alpine day indeed!
We began the day with sends of Tear (HS 4b) and the Gutter (D), both spectacular climbs in a wonderful situation.
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| Scott Soloing Tear |
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| The gutter, maybe the best diff I've done |
After sending these two we decided we may as well send the most classic route at Polldubh: Storm (HVS 5a) as well as being one of the finest it's also one of the longest here. The guidebook describes 4 pitches of climbing, to speed up the process we however decided to do it in just two. The whole climb is very well protected and follows a fantastic line with interesting situations and is in the sun a lot of the day. Scott linked the first two pitches, pitch one (4b) follows a slabby corner up to a ledge, then pitch 2 (4c) follows a diagonally trending crack up to a precariously perched pine tree which you make a hanging belay off of.
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| Scott moving up the first pitch of Storm |
The third pitch is the crux which trends right into a shallow groove and then you have to pull over a bulge (the crux) after this the climbing eases dramatically as you romp up the upper slabs to a final belay.
After sending the route Scott realised he'd left his phone on the ledge at mid height, so we had to wait for another party to climb the route and collect his phone to return it to us. Not wanting to Idle I decided to walk off and solo a few easier routes, Namely Repton Right Wall (VD) and tykes climb (VD). After soloing these I returned to the bottom of storm and napped in the sunshine for an hour while I waited for the other party to finish the climb.
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| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co6WMzDOh1o |
Next up was a foray further into glen Nevis, we both had a look at some of the lines on the river cliffs which looked really cool but also looked like they had a lot of consequences if you got it wrong. Definitely next time though, instead we headed up to wave buttress and did Bewsey Crack (HVS 5a), a fairly sandbagged HVS though still great climbing in a good situation. Having visited this crag I've decided that I'd like my first E3 sends to be here. The two lines that really appeal to me are Edgehog and Crackattack E3 6a and 5c respectively. Both look absolutely stunning but unfortunately the sun was going down by the time I'd had a serious look at either of them.
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| Bewsey Crack |
While the end to a great if unproductive day was signalled by the sun going down it also signalled the valley going a glorious orange colour and some nice photographs.
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| Finally worked out how to use panorama! |
Day 5: Farletter
There's not really much to say about our last day, we woke late to compensate for all the early starts the days before and met up with Mark Councill to mess around and top rope some hard steep climbing. Nothing much interesting happened apart from me tearing my finger open on a sharp quartz edge and Reef/Reiff (Marks dog) buried my wallet which now seems funny but at the time I was understandably worried.
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| Me top roping Too farr for the bear (E4 5c) |
Having travelled around a lot of Scotland I was very tired and my body was pretty beaten so I was fairly happy to return home to my bed and get a few days of doing nothing much, but already I want to get back out climbing again and bag some more hard routes!
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| A map showing where we got to on our journey! |
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