So, I'm just back from Coire Lagan & the weather is closing into rain & squalls after a brilliant weekend cranking in a midge free sunlit breeze. Shame Dave MacLeod didn't show after Glenmore, but you can't be everywhere aye. James just shrugged & grinned when I told him he was on his way. Well, we have 4 new boulders, 1 project & 2 new important lines. First up is something for Pete Murray. Aye, I've just climbed that steep green wall to the right of It's Over as an independant line, finally. And what a feckin' struggle it's been. It's not so green these days hombre, & its worth about hardV13 in numbers & brilliant climbing with the crux, through the undercut roof lip sitter, being a big lock off & dynamic reach, from a shared black crystal, [the size of a large raisin!] into the highside slope [if you can hold it with your left foot up by your head] . Being a numpty I even managed to fall off the areted top of Evening Wings way after the hard climbing ends!

The complete left to right link project also looks more & more feasable every week, as new crimps are unearthed from failing flakes. Sometimes the rake of the wire brush reveals a wee feature like a sidepull ripple, or a loose crimpy flake to be prised open in the hope that, the legendary magic hold may lurk beneath, sending me into fits of insane optimism & frenzied levering. There's even a hold on the project known as, the fud...on account of its shape & the fact it can be dangled damp. The line will come, it's just a matter of time, & effort, self erosion & being a beginner.

At the Sheiling Hideout, way off Coire a' Grhunda I managed to skin my teeth & finally nail down the roof -ss- roof into the excellent Street Fighting Years traverse. The deep roof sitter, like Trace Element follows an obvious crack straight out, diagonal right, to the lip, but on only 3, poorly spaced & much smaller holds, one of which is a tension sloper, one a crap mono. The climbing is also steeper over it's 12ft, at nearly 160°. Becuase of the depth of the roof, this can be considered an utterly desperate independant line in it's own right. I reckon a moot of around V15 wouldn't be inaccurate, but it's a grade for strong forethought, yet it's harder than the entire It's Over sequence, even though it only has 4 or so moves, including a 360° invert to hit the lip. After or during that sequence, [it's negligible], both my middle fingers burst at the tips, so I bailed on the lip, having held it & rearranged the inversion sitting on my foot, rather than go down to the bone doing an easy uk6a mantel out. Left some good blood stains drying on the rock though. This line is raging, a 3 star roof just to ogle at, & at first, that's exactly what you do, a roll hanging limply in your mouth, pondering, unless you have a genuis mind steeped in spacial physical laws, you wonder how it's possible. But like anything, it won't climb itself, so you just get on it, & start work & work & work. There's even a small chance DaveMac will be able to hold the starter, so that's maybe that bit catered for. The rest of it will be v16 for him though, if current trends are anything to go by. [kiddin' Dave]. Unlike the more obvious track of the green wall, this line through the roof defines, for me, the word problem when it comes to climbing in the Coire. I've called it Eat Yerself Whole. Photos soon & hopefully a film sooner rather than later, & don't fool yourself that these 2 problems are merely a weekends work.

Put these lines in the magazines & NRDB? It makes no difference to me either way but, no thanks, not just yet, not with grown Scottish climbers publically mouthing eachother off on the interweb, besides, it only encourages the big girls blouses into endless bouts of moronic whining & craps out the scene even further. What a shame to see an excellent resource from Mark, Dave, Mike & all, suffer under the constant impotent whinning of idiots. Maybe it's time to go back a few years & simply write, climbed a rock, in some glen, no grade. Repeated this also, at some venue, nice day. It's not a problem since I climb for other reasons than peoples approval, spotlights, newsmaking, forums & sponsorship. Aye magazines & forums, we don't really need to open either to guess whats inside these days anyway, so who knows what's going on in that tiny world of insignificance. Havn't picked a mag up in nearly a year, & the fact is, it suits the wilderness better & the purpose of what the doing is really about rather than some half-baked second hand pish nobody got their facts right on. To find your own motivation & inspiration, your own fury & inspiration is all that makes sense. The rest of it, after the climb is done, is just a dissipating swirling wake of words, the boat has already sailed. It's what we came here to do isn't it? Fire the engines, swing the hammer, push mystic, cut loose into the fury of action, blood adrenalin & vision. Talking about climbing is nothing more than a pastime for those who like to swim in the endless residue of action. Good luck with that then...Oh, the cardinal sin of actully going climbing...whatever next! The Hideout will be in James updated topo & the new guide book later this year, along with the lines anyway. I did put these lines on =8a.nu= briefly, but decided with Jens [founder of 8a.nu & Swedish Junior National coach], to get some photos into him first & hand it all over to the newsdesk in one lump, as Johno seems to have vanished off the face of the earth...Ok, some people are talking me round, but I'm really finding it hard to see the point in any of it, any more...maybe I need something more than rocks in this life & something other than my own shadow...whatever. Then James turns up & bored of bouldering on his own, has handed me over a load of hard roof problems at the amazing Coruisk venue. Couple that with the sport route on Lewis & the Coire project, the rest of the year is taken care of then!

Here we stand in a special place. What are you gonna do here? Now we stand in a special place, what will you do here? What show of soul, are we gonna get from you? It could be deliverance, or a history under these skies so blue...Could be something true...but if I know you, you’ll bang the drum like monkeys do...I know you love the high life, you love to leap around, you love to beat your chest & make your sound, but not here man- this is sacred ground, with the power flowing through...

I'm gonna flick on Radio Na Gael & read Johnos excellent Engram 1 piece again instead, before hiding under some deep hot water to un-sieze my back, & think of suitable epitaphs in which to drape fallen lines, let my tips repair & sleep. Tomorrow I guess I'll hit the Lewis bolter with a few glue-ins, & make a swift u-turn towards the Coire for the weekend. I feel a Coire seige coming on. There were plenty of mats & lads trucking around & alot of the classic bouldering seemed perma-chalked. Somehow I even got talked into demonstrating how Snake Attack goes [yet again!!] & doing some spotting inbetween giving a Venom Jag demo, which had them boggle eyed & cursing quite a bit...curious aye. But not as boggle eyed & curious as James was after the Skye festival & stealing bottles of whisky with a back-stage pass. He spent about 2 hours, rubbered, thinking he was talking to a female pop star only to find out it was the porta-loo cleaner.

Aye...some rocks

That's Skye & the Coire for you, even if its not climbing weather. It's mighty hard on the ribs, watching 4 fellas in a lightning storm, trying to put up a house sized tent in a big howler. Honestly, it was like watching the Krypton Factor go live.

Ж - Ж - Ж - Ж - Ж

The Hideout: Eat Yourself Whole - V15, Green Wall named Paper Tiger - hard V13, Street Fighting Years low start- V11. New Bouders: Steep traverse Dickholder - V7, traverse 02 [unamed] -V6, Steep wall arete [unamed] & -ss- v9. Project boulder: blank areted wall with no holds - V13? [similarities to Ben Moon's own Cypher], concave -lh- variation v?

A valiant effort by Dave on Trace Element [of life] V13, saw him fight towards the cruxy section a good few times, but in truth, it's a shame he didn't make the second ascent, but not through lack of trying though! Eventually, as with problems of this level, you burn-out, your grip on the unforgiving edges fades before your resolve ever does, but to say it was a failure is to harsh. Daves attempt at repeating the problem is easily the best effort of anyone to-date, so in that sense, the word has no place. After a breather he decided to hook up a new V8 instead, as a kind of tea-break, now named Lip Service.

Dave MacLeod with his food blender screaming on Trace Element - but no banana

Having made the second ascent of Distant Early Warning on the Sea Peanut some minutes before [complete with the harder sit-start link], celebrations ensued with Scott initiating the proceedings with a ritualistic round of dead seagull throwing. Not willing to leave empty handed, Dave turned his attention to the roof lip circuit [Lip Service], now a new V8 with a perplexing, blind & complex series of hand movements on the crux at it's end; but before it went, we had all lined up, umming & arring at hold sequences, Cubby pointing out physical equations of balance, myself poking at the offending sloper above. Three mad scientists all staring at the chalked ripple that had beaten Daves first two attempts. He figured it out himself, of course, but you have to lend an opinion, it's the rules if you're a spotter.

Attentive spotters are able to will a climber along his new line, it's a meeting of minds.

All this amongst Yoyo & Scott doing a comedy chase routine over the Port stones while Malcolm plied us with a bottomless flask of coffee. Dave will be back again soon to scope out the huge, possibly E10 trad line in the An t-Súil cathedral & hopefully make the first repeat my own Six Blade Knife [F8b+] high above the pounding Atlantic swell. His tenacity & passion for climbing, like my own, seems often unstoppable & unswerving...like Cubbys & Scotts, like Johnos, it's genuine & infectious. I just hope he looks up sharp when I come screaming off the cathedral roof, when we share belaying on eachothers respective projects.

Left to Right: Hoodlum Identity Parade - Scott Muir, Yoyo, Cubby & Malcolm

At frustratingly short notice, Dave MacLeod phoned to say, himself, Cubby & Scott Muir are on the islands & en-route for a meet up tomorrow or this Tuesday. After Dalbeg, I'll take them to scope out the secret An t-Súil cathedral & it's trad possibilities. If Dave commits to the awesome left roof & headwall challenge, we could well be looking at E10 in Scotland, immediately next door to a F9a courtesy of myself...Project updates will be posted here as the finale is reached. In 6 or so days, there will also be a headwall extension of Collinex bolts to further Six Blade Knife from F8b+ & add a more natural conclusion, along with a couple of bomber replacement eyes in the 9a line. You've gotta love abbing into huge dark holes with a 2.7kw generator dangling on jummars, a clattering Hilti & a rack of wieghty tat aye. So, the finale will be sooner rather than later, given that I can, by the skin of all effort, keep it together on the last few moves. Absolutely psyched.

V15 crux sequences midway on bolts, can be quite tiring - even just to look at.

ф - ф - ф - ф - ф - ф

By The Way

Extradition - mountain bouldering, 2200ft above sea-level, icicles & -9°C

Doubtless my battered old yellow & grey Quasar will do some snow bound winters up here as the lines unfold; & doubtless I'll be stopping off here every other week, inbetween working the monster Coire project, to add a line or 10 through summer. Altitude moves in a midge free cool breeze, big V's & lazy V's, the Uists out to the right, the odd tour bus snaking through way below...The higher bouldering areas are also alot more definable than the chaos in the lower reaches, thus, having a markable area of activity should make Clisham less of a topo nightmare come hide & seek game for other players looking for new or established lines. That said, some of the huge free-standing lone gems hiding along the shepherding paths, despite their remoteness, are worth the long jolly in their own right. There should be some black & white photography of the bouldering soon. I've added the Clisham Pass to the Scottish Climbs NRDB =here= anyways. Look out for the Loch-Down roof, a near horizontal tour-de-force, & the v.Vo2-Loch n' Load steep arete & finger breaker, both to be added soon. [For those of you wondering what the v.Vo2 bit in the name is, it refers to minimal-maximal running velocities & lactate thresholds]. So anyway, if you pull over in the lay-bye for a brew & hear a Hilti clattering away in the distance, or the frustrated scream of a loon eminating from the surrounding tallus & decide to investigate...I take it strong with one sugar.