We’re standing somewhere on our way to Fort William. Lunch, small car repairs, re-sorting out climbing gear. A woman walks by and says she wants to take a picture. I look behind our car and see a small version of our campervan. We hop out and take a look at the blue car called Victor. The same blue as my T3. She offers us a flapjack and some cake.
Climbed making friends
It’s restday. After one evening in Greg’s Boulder room, the boat travel, one day drytooling at Newtyle and two days of mixed climbing at the Cairngorms we needed a restday. Though, the weather looks beautiful, perfect conditions. Is it wrong to take a restday today…?
On Wednesday we arrived by boat to Newcastle. Greg Boswell invited us to his home.
Greg is one of the best climbers out here with super serious climbs, first ascents and hard drytooling routes on his name. That evening I tried to keep up with his moves on his little training wall, but he was just so full of power!
His super kind mum cooked us dinner and we even had electricity to heat our campervan.
Greg knows a lot about Scottish mixed climbing, so much he doesn’t need the guidebooks to know all the climbs. So we could borrow his books for this trip. He drew in new lines, gave advice on the best climbs, conditions, websites with all kinds of info (avalanches, conditions, latest climbs…) and within an hour I had my notebook full of to-be-done climbs. More than I could ever manage on this trip.
The Boswell bible collection
The goal is to visit as many areas as possible and to climb as many routes as possible. Not necessarily super hard routes, more famous, classic and special routes.
Our first real day didn’t even involve mixed climbing. It was supposed to be rainy so not the right conditions for Scottish mixed climbing.
Alternative: Newtyle quarry at Dunkeld.
Greg came with us and was a huge help to flashing the routes. Fast & Furious was our warmup. Greg went first, easily making all the moves without fig.fours. I am still on my no-figure-of-four mission so I decided to not use the move today either. It would have been much easier with fig.fours but I made it on my first go. Happy I did the route that seemed impossible 4 years ago when I visited the place after the STS series in Ice Factor (Kinlochleven).
Next route was Torchlight. A bit a controversial routes as it was first graded D13 but now downgraded to D10+/D11. Dennis flashed the route with the help of Greg who pointed out the holds with his clip stick as high as he could. No figure of fours was the mission. And I did it :)
Happy with my climb we went for the big project: DTS Spirit, a short, bouldery route put up by Jeff Mercier three years ago. The first move looked super long. But Dennis made it! He’d tried the route a few years ago after his trip to the STS in Glasgow but couldn’t do all the moves. Now, much stronger and more trained in the long moves he ‘jumped’ from one hold to the next climbing it on his first go. Greg meanwhile climbed Frankenstein and Big Bad Wolf, showing how it’s done, using power, technique and endurance. And no figure of fours.
Meanwhile Ines and Sepp arrived and climbed with us. Still full of energy they went on the routes that we just finished.
Ines climbin Torchlight
My turn on DTS spirit. The first move… I tried, tried, tried and understood I had to do it differently. My body didn’t understand yet how to perform differently and was stuck in the almost static movement that had to become dynamic. I had to jump, really jump, let my feet come off the wall like a fully dyno. But my body didn’t want to, yet. The intermediate hold I was using was not part of the route. Doing the move from that hold would be cheating. So I kept on trying from the big hold… After trying over and over again I decided to skip the move and go for the rest of the route, just to see what it was like. The moves were long, super long and sometimes they felt almost impossible. The move to the steinpull felt impossible without a figure of four and reminded me of the steinpull move in Bichette (Usine). Eventually I managed to make the moves except for the very first move in the route. |
Apparently it did get me tired and the other routes didn’t go as smooth anymore. The extension of Fast & Furious; Too Fast too Furious was a bit too much to climb in once.
Greg shows how it’s done.
Simon Yearsly, a good climber with a very positive attitude we met on the STS a couple of years ago, invited us for a beer in the pub of Dunkeld and that evening he cooked us all a super nice dinner at his house. Grilled eggplant, couscous, salad, lasagne and a little bit of his new specialty; grilled sweet potato with crunchy peanut butter. We parked our van between his collection of campervans.
Simon has a small campervan rental business called Big Tree Campervans. He rents out small campervans that fit the Scottish conditions. Not the big white boxes, but small, friendly convenient cars with all you need (kitchen, heating, light, bed ect) Really worth taking a look at his vans if you consider a trip to Scotland.
The next morning we woke up to drive to the Cairngorms. Plan was to walk in together with Ines and Sepp but as our van is a little slower we eventually met them on the top of the cliffs in the wind. It was windy, really windy, but otherwise the weather was all right. As long as the snow didn’t blow in your face it was okay.
Climbing ‘The Crack’
Summit happiness
Dennis and I decided to go for some easier routes to get used to the climbing. Placing nuts instead of friends, using pegs instead of bolts, using real rock instead of drilled pockets with our axes, swinging into frozen turf instead of ice. It was all a little different from last month’s competition climbing. But we adapted fast enough. With first a three/four, then a four/five and ending with a tricky six/seven we could call it a successful first day.
My eyebrows and lashes were frozen, I got bad hot aches, I placed hexes and nuts and we found our way back to the parking without getting lost in the blizzard.
Frozen :)
We still felt tired of our drytooling sessions on the first two days but we had to go out again.
Friday today. And busy, really busy because of the holidays. So busy we decided to walk as far as possible to the side of the cliff.
We were not the first; Ines and Sepp just started on a famous route on the face of the wall. We went for another route called ‘The Seam’.
Meanwhile another team started in a route left of us (Invernookie) crossing our ropes from the right we were happy to be with just a few climbers around, listening to the screams and shouts from the other areas… Our route was easy but fun climbing with more technical sections the higher we got. We walked around and went for the next route. Same start but then more to the left, we climbed a variation that we found later in the other guidebook (good to know: the Scottish Winter Climbing guidebook only shows a selection of the best Winter climbs).
We topped out, walked around again and found the other team just finishing their climb. We decided to climb Invernookie as well but chose a variation to the right to avoid big rope tangles with the other teams in the route. It was fun climbing slightly more interesting than the over-climbed standard route. I felt more and more confident with the gear and placed the hexes and nuts with as much ease as I would place a cam (well, placing a hex sometimes takes a little longer as sometimes a little hammering is required).
Time to head down again, we walked to the bottom of the ‘bowl’ retrieved the big hex the other team dropped and walked to our ‘home’.
On the way, talking in Dutch a woman answered is in Dutch as well. She wondered what we did; we climbed. If we summitted. Yes, three times we replied. Her boyfriend/husband turned out to be Scottish. He asked what mountain we did, if we just came back from Ben Nevis. Well…it turns out not all Scots know their country that well… We waited for the other team to get down to give their hex back as we promised but they walked straight past us. Dennis ran to the bus and gave back their hex. “You guys are legends”.
We parked down at the lake again and enjoyed the beautiful view. Now, all equipment sorted, dried and rested we’re ready again for the next area.
I wonder where the weather will take us tomorrow.
Scottish mixed
We’re standing somewhere on our way to Fort William. Lunch, small car repairs, re-sorting out climbing gear. A woman walks by and says she wants to take a picture. I look behind our car and see a small version of our campervan. We hop out and take a look at the blue car called Victor. The same blue as my T3. She offers us a flapjack and some cake.
Climbed making friends
It’s restday. After one evening in Greg’s Boulder room, the boat travel, one day drytooling at Newtyle and two days of mixed climbing at the Cairngorms we needed a restday.
Though, the weather looks beautiful, perfect conditions. Is it wrong to take a restday today…?
On Wednesday we arrived by boat to Newcastle. Greg Boswell invited us to his home.
Greg is one of the best climbers out here with super serious climbs, first ascents and hard drytooling routes on his name. That evening I tried to keep up with his moves on his little training wall, but he was just so full of power!
His super kind mum cooked us dinner and we even had electricity to heat our campervan.
Greg knows a lot about Scottish mixed climbing, so much he doesn’t need the guidebooks to know all the climbs. So we could borrow his books for this trip. He drew in new lines, gave advice on the best climbs, conditions, websites with all kinds of info (avalanches, conditions, latest climbs…) and within an hour I had my notebook full of to-be-done climbs. More than I could ever manage on this trip.
The Boswell bible collection
The goal is to visit as many areas as possible and to climb as many routes as possible. Not necessarily super hard routes, more famous, classic and special routes.
Our first real day didn’t even involve mixed climbing. It was supposed to be rainy so not the right conditions for Scottish mixed climbing.
Alternative: Newtyle quarry at Dunkeld.
Greg came with us and was a huge help to flashing the routes. Fast & Furious was our warmup. Greg went first, easily making all the moves without fig.fours. I am still on my no-figure-of-four mission so I decided to not use the move today either. It would have been much easier with fig.fours but I made it on my first go. Happy I did the route that seemed impossible 4 years ago when I visited the place after the STS series in Ice Factor (Kinlochleven).
Next route was Torchlight. A bit a controversial routes as it was first graded D13 but now downgraded to D10+/D11. Dennis flashed the route with the help of Greg who pointed out the holds with his clip stick as high as he could. No figure of fours was the mission. And I did it :)
Happy with my climb we went for the big project: DTS Spirit, a short, bouldery route put up by Jeff Mercier three years ago. The first move looked super long. But Dennis made it! He’d tried the route a few years ago after his trip to the STS in Glasgow but couldn’t do all the moves. Now, much stronger and more trained in the long moves he ‘jumped’ from one hold to the next climbing it on his first go. Greg meanwhile climbed Frankenstein and Big Bad Wolf, showing how it’s done, using power, technique and endurance. And no figure of fours.
Meanwhile Ines and Sepp arrived and climbed with us. Still full of energy they went on the routes that we just finished.
Ines climbin Torchlight
My turn on DTS spirit. The first move… I tried, tried, tried and understood I had to do it differently. My body didn’t understand yet how to perform differently and was stuck in the almost static movement that had to become dynamic. I had to jump, really jump, let my feet come off the wall like a fully dyno. But my body didn’t want to, yet. The intermediate hold I was using was not part of the route. Doing the move from that hold would be cheating. So I kept on trying from the big hold… After trying over and over again I decided to skip the move and go for the rest of the route, just to see what it was like. The moves were long, super long and sometimes they felt almost impossible. The move to the steinpull felt impossible without a figure of four and reminded me of the steinpull move in Bichette (Usine). Eventually I managed to make the moves except for the very first move in the route. |
Apparently it did get me tired and the other routes didn’t go as smooth anymore. The extension of Fast & Furious; Too Fast too Furious was a bit too much to climb in once.
Greg shows how it’s done.
Simon Yearsly, a good climber with a very positive attitude we met on the STS a couple of years ago, invited us for a beer in the pub of Dunkeld and that evening he cooked us all a super nice dinner at his house. Grilled eggplant, couscous, salad, lasagne and a little bit of his new specialty; grilled sweet potato with crunchy peanut butter. We parked our van between his collection of campervans.
Simon has a small campervan rental business called Big Tree Campervans. He rents out small campervans that fit the Scottish conditions. Not the big white boxes, but small, friendly convenient cars with all you need (kitchen, heating, light, bed ect) Really worth taking a look at his vans if you consider a trip to Scotland.
The next morning we woke up to drive to the Cairngorms. Plan was to walk in together with Ines and Sepp but as our van is a little slower we eventually met them on the top of the cliffs in the wind. It was windy, really windy, but otherwise the weather was all right. As long as the snow didn’t blow in your face it was okay.
Climbing ‘The Crack’
Summit happiness
Dennis and I decided to go for some easier routes to get used to the climbing. Placing nuts instead of friends, using pegs instead of bolts, using real rock instead of drilled pockets with our axes, swinging into frozen turf instead of ice. It was all a little different from last month’s competition climbing. But we adapted fast enough. With first a three/four, then a four/five and ending with a tricky six/seven we could call it a successful first day.
My eyebrows and lashes were frozen, I got bad hot aches, I placed hexes and nuts and we found our way back to the parking without getting lost in the blizzard.
Frozen :)
We still felt tired of our drytooling sessions on the first two days but we had to go out again.
Friday today. And busy, really busy because of the holidays. So busy we decided to walk as far as possible to the side of the cliff.
We were not the first; Ines and Sepp just started on a famous route on the face of the wall. We went for another route called ‘The Seam’.
Meanwhile another team started in a route left of us (Invernookie) crossing our ropes from the right we were happy to be with just a few climbers around, listening to the screams and shouts from the other areas… Our route was easy but fun climbing with more technical sections the higher we got. We walked around and went for the next route. Same start but then more to the left, we climbed a variation that we found later in the other guidebook (good to know: the Scottish Winter Climbing guidebook only shows a selection of the best Winter climbs).
We topped out, walked around again and found the other team just finishing their climb. We decided to climb Invernookie as well but chose a variation to the right to avoid big rope tangles with the other teams in the route. It was fun climbing slightly more interesting than the over-climbed standard route. I felt more and more confident with the gear and placed the hexes and nuts with as much ease as I would place a cam (well, placing a hex sometimes takes a little longer as sometimes a little hammering is required).
Time to head down again, we walked to the bottom of the ‘bowl’ retrieved the big hex the other team dropped and walked to our ‘home’.
On the way, talking in Dutch a woman answered is in Dutch as well. She wondered what we did; we climbed. If we summitted. Yes, three times we replied. Her boyfriend/husband turned out to be Scottish. He asked what mountain we did, if we just came back from Ben Nevis. Well…it turns out not all Scots know their country that well… We waited for the other team to get down to give their hex back as we promised but they walked straight past us. Dennis ran to the bus and gave back their hex. “You guys are legends”.
We parked down at the lake again and enjoyed the beautiful view. Now, all equipment sorted, dried and rested we’re ready again for the next area.
I wonder where the weather will take us tomorrow.
Good view
Related
2 replies to “Scottish mixed”
Martin Mckenna
We met you guys at the CIC hut yesterday. So you ended up doing The Curtain? Not the best weather! Hope you had a good day!
Dennis van Hoek
Hey martin, Yes we climbed the Curtain weather s*cked.Climb was ok.But tomorrow it’s Ben again :) Greetz Dennis