Colin’s stories

Limestone on Mull

Sun, 7 Mar 2010 09:39:52 +0000

Balmeanach is probably unique, the routes start up quartz conglomerate then continue on limestone.
These are a few routes there and the people I climbed them with.

Milanda Shelf VS 1994
Martin MacLean worked with me, his dad used to deliver the bread to Mull so he (like his dad) was called Milanda. The first climb at Balmeanach was Martin's first (and probably only) time climbing.

Mushroom Picking HVS 1995
Martyn Bennett was an incredible musician who settled on Mull.

Mur Sans Spits E1 1996
Dave Ritchie lives on the Isle of Luing south of Oban and would come over sometimes for an evening climbing. I was going to bolt some lines as the crag was steep limestone but found some gear placements on this one.

Is it Safe? E5 1996
Julian Fisher is a dentist who was doing a locum on Mull (and writing a climbing guide to South Africa). He was very keen and was going to help me bolt the line left of Mur Sans Spits but then thought he could lead it. It was strenuous with spaced protection and he had problems with rope drag but still managed to climb it in fine style, he wanted me to retro bolt it.
I named the route, Julian had seen 'Little Shop of Horrors' but not 'Marathon Man'.

Glam Rock E2 1999
Calum Black worked for the Hydro Board on Mull. The rock on this route sparkled with the crystals in it, I was going to call it Gary Glitter but was talked out of it so it became Glam Rock.

Project ? ?
Michael Tweedley sometimes visits Mull, he has still not led his project (photo below).

There are crag photos here Topos

The guide is here Balmeanach

Bolts on Skye

Mon, 8 Feb 2010 17:42:23 +0000

It was sunny when we got to Skye on Saturday so I changed plans and went to Neist. The sun was coming and going so climbing was cold and therefore hard work with the strong easterly.
Sunday (yesterday) we went back to Neist, it was overcast but there was still a strong cold wind so we gave up before we started.
Driving past Dunvegan the sun came out so we went to look for crags and soon found a short sunny one. It had two generously bolted lines so we went back to the car for the gear and the sun disappeared!
The only bolt I’ve clipped on Skye was a relic from the fifties on Sgurr Sgumain. I clipped another yesterday but didn’t clip a third as my fingers were so cold. The climbing looked good but some of the holds were polished, perhaps from over enthusiastic brushing?

Photo above is Neist on Saturday.
Photo below has ten bolts, taken on Sunday.

Fuori

Sat, 2 Jan 2010 15:48:42 +0000

My first trip to the Alps was nothing great.
The second trip was far more productive. I did a number of enjoyable routes on different mountains with various partners, miraculously the weather usually seemed to deteriorate whenever we got back to the valley and needed a rest.
There are a few photos here CH

On the last day of the trip The Big Russian and I were going to try the Fuori, it had such a fine looking ridge. Left of the bright rock in the photo above.
VI was the top grade in the Alps (which we hadn’t tried before); this was divided into VI+, VI and VI-. The Fuori was VI so maybe we stood a chance. Our guide book was not very encouraging; ‘Unfortunately a huge rockfall tore away the right wall of the long chimney. This has produced harder climbing and more artificial techniques’.
In Scotland I would back off a route rather than pull on a runner, but we had got up a route a few days earlier which had two points of aid, so perhaps we could climb two pitches on aid to get up the ridge.
After climbing The Pioda we had traversed along the ridge to the top of the Fuori and found a way down with a few abseils, so at least we knew how to get off, if we got to the top of the route.
I was climbing slightly better than The Russian so expected to do more than my share of leading. He was more worried about the aid than I was, so we had agreed the previous day that I would try to lead the aid.

The Big Russian, The Wee Russian, Billy and I were sleeping under a large granite boulder, the pair of us left before first light and headed up towards the Fuori, it was the coldest morning of the trip and the spring we had expected to drink from had frozen up, so being thirsty was not a good start to the day.
The pullover my Mother had knitted and my Belstaff motor bike jacket were not keeping the cold out so Raynaud’s took over and my hands went numb.
When we got to the start of the route I told The Russian he would have to lead and I struggled to second with white fingers.
I had warmed up by the time we got to the first aid pitch so took over the lead. What a long stunning pitch it was. It went up just left of a very sharp arête and was probably a bit steep to be called a slab, to the right of the arête the rock was overhanging with a drop of at least a thousand feet.
I followed a line of drilled holes at about two foot spacing, each hole contained a piton. It would probably have been OK to use the pegs as footholds but I decided to take my time, not make mistakes, and clip slings into the pegs for my feet. The Russian was out of sight patiently paying out rope so he had little idea what I was up to.
I belayed below the crux overhang, The Russian (still nervous) shouted up a question as he was concerned that my belay might be inadequate. “Two pegs and three bolts” was my reply.
After he arrived at the belay we swapped places and I quickly led the overhang. We did some more pitches then scrambled a few hundred feet to the summit.
The frost had cleared the air and the view over miles and miles of peaks was spectacular.
The lens was loose on my compact camera (after someone had damaged it squeezing up a chimney in Glencoe, with it slung round their neck). During this trip the lens had detached from the camera completely so I had glued it back on and taken a couple of films, I didn’t know if the photos would turn out so I had stopped taking snaps. The Russian had a waterproof camera, but it didn’t have an exposure meter so he had guessed the exposure, the results were overexposed.
Memories would have to do.

Ardtun Guide

Tue, 1 Dec 2009 18:53:39 +0000

The Hebrides guide only included some of the routes from 1996. Fifty routes at Ardtun were in the guide, these were first climbed from 1994 to 1996, there are now more than one hundred and fifty routes.

The guide is here. ARDTUN

There are a couple of topos here. Topos

The French Cure

Sat, 7 Nov 2009 18:56:04 +0000

I was overtaking near Corran (long time ago) when the back tyre went; I fought to keep the bike upright but soon lost, hit the road and went unconscious.
When I came round my neck ached and some do-gooder was trying to remove my crash helmet-a worrying combination.
I got up and starting pacing around (I was full of energy), pulled the bike upright, did some more marching then gently removed my badly scraped crash helmet. I was being told repeatedly to sit down but I couldn’t stay still, I paced back and forward and worried about my neck.
An ambulance arrived after a while and I had calmed down a bit so I sat in the ambulance and waited for the police. The ambulance man asked where I was going and I replied I didn’t know, he then asked where I had been and got the same reply. Later the Policeman turned up and asked if I had been drinking, I told him I had no idea, we got the answer when the breathalyser reading was negative.
I spent a night in the Belford Hospital, they woke me at regular intervals through the night to see if my brain was working OK, I was then signed off from work with whiplash. Brian Williamson and I had planned to go to France but I decided to still go as it had been paid for.
We got to Barney and Jackie’s flat in Marseille then we were driven north.
I was really sore and shouldn’t have climbed but I hadn’t done much at Verdon so another route was a big temptation.
We did a few abseils down a corner from bunches of slings round trees. I thought it was odd passing a tree draped with slings as I followed Barney and Brian. I got to the end of the ropes; they didn’t reach the ground (because we had saved time by missing out an abseil!). I was told to solo down the overhanging hand crack while pulling down one of the ends, the crack was short, below was a slope, if I fell and didn’t stop there was a drop of a few hundred feet, I managed to get down after a lot of cursing.
The climb Barney chose was OK but with my injuries I couldn’t twist my back or turn my head to look for holds on the left so found it desperate.
After ten days of stretching and pulling between bolts in Provence my neck was still tender but I was feeling much better and was happy with my leading.

Photo above Brian’s bike on the left, mine on the right.
Photo below Verdon by Robert Moody.

Elgol, a brief history

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:20:11 +0100

Many of the sea cliffs on Skye were developed by climbers from Fort William and/or the Lake District. Elgol was different as most of the routes were climbed by locally based climbers.
Rob MacDonald, Dominic Partridge and Steve Hill were living on Skye, Neil Smith was living in Kyle of Lochalsh.

Rob was making a living diving for scallops and had gone past the crag (Suidhe Biorach) in his boat many times, the crag is known locally as The Altar so that gave a theme for a number of the routes.
Rob and Dominic went to the crag by boat in 1992 and climbed their first route ‘Jamie Jampot’ (VS ***) ground up (or sea up), Rob has a son called Jamie.

One day in 1993 a big team arrived at the crag, Steve led ‘Veritas Spendour’ (E3 ***) but Neil had the wire brush so he nabbed ‘India’ (E3 ***). Just about everybody seconded everything that day.
I googled Veritas Spendour recently: The Encyclical Veritatis splendor, specifically addressed to "all the bishops of the Catholic Church."

Photo above is Neil FA Hairy Beast.

Photo top by Morris MacLeod, left to right: Hairy Beast, Jamie Jampot, India, Mother’s Pride.

My first visit was in the following year with Neil, we did two new routes; Neil led ‘Hairy Beast’ (Priest) and I led ‘The Pope Must Die’: not much thought went into naming that route. We then repeated Jamie Jampot and Crack of Zawn.
Before I dropped Neil off at his house I took him into the shop at Kyle and showed him the SMC district guide book, I knew there was mention of the routes ‘Fertility Left’ and ‘Fertility Right’, they were climbed five years before Jamie Jampot. The locals had until then thought nobody else had climbed there.

The next year Neil was ‘looking’ at a very steep route at the right hand side of the cliff. Neil and Dominic were both working on the same North Sea platform, doing the same job but on opposite shifts. When Neil went back to work for two weeks, Dominic finished his ‘shift’. Neil’s ‘friend’ let him down and told Dominic about the line which he duly climbed with Rob. Rob decided on the name ‘Mothers Pride’ (E4 ***) as the flakes looked like slices of bread (and Dominic’s mother would be proud of him).

Many of the routes lack first ascent details such as dates and names of seconds in the Skye guide. Neil enjoys doing new stuff but is very laid back when it comes to recording them; Steve was in the middle of a huge barney with his girlfriend when Noel Williams (the guide book writer) phoned for details.

Steve left Skye and moved to Plymouth where he met Nick Hancock. Neil and others had been top roping the overhangs in the middle of the crag. Nick headed north and led the route, ‘Rapid Learning Curve’ E6 ****. The route was never recorded properly.

Photo above by Morris MacLeod, left to right: Crack of Zawn, Tree Route, Fertility Right. Rapid Learning Curve climbs the triple overhang left of Tree Route.

Years later I was writing up the Skye Sea Cliffs for the SMC guide ‘Scottish Rock Climbs’, so I got hold of Nick’s e-mail address and asked him to write up the route from the other side of the world. Nick and Steve had also climbed a route on a stack on Skye at E7, another route that was not written up and Steve doesn’t remember where it is!

Photo above is Dominic at Bornesketaig August 2009, his first climb for a few years.

Rob still lives on Skye.
Neil went to Texas for a couple of years but has moved back to Kyle.
Dominic lives on his boat on a river between Spain and Portugal.
Steve lives in Switzerland.
Nick lives in Tasmania.