Found - genuine & originally styled rock shoe on Hebridean beach. Until recently, a holiday let occupied by a single, well behaved, sideways beach dancer with castanets...in fact, I'm tempted to phone Rab with milk as it's to big to be Cubbys. It may well be Rabs, since it also appears to have been floating around the Western sea-cliffs for decades. But did they have Merrells back in the 20's?...hmm...

Anyway, having unfortunately missed Lee at short notice who's up at Cairn Liath bouldering & mapping again amongst hunners of tiny carnivores; I'm away through the rain on my pre-planned Harris trip now, sorting the new trad-crag & an impressive line that feels E7/8 thus far. On a shunt I reckon f8a/b & the only gear I can find, good as it is, is waaaay below the crux, so a fall from the roof would slam you inverted into the lower headwall or ground. The irony is, I've found a hard route with good gear for once, yet you'd hit the ground or headwall before any wieght went onto the cam....This steep cataclysm hides amongst one of the best bold gearless aretes I've happened across in the islands. Think, Post Modern Arete -E6,6c or a huge version of that highballer they call Ulysses - E6,6b.. Below the bastions of overhanging teeth like an insane unclimbed overbite, the mouth yawns through dripping beards of dry hung lichen, revealing black & brackish lagoons, stocked & running, deep enough for diving, in amongst giant teeth dropped scattered & claimed by turf. Looking back up at the ferocity above is dizzying...exciting when you have seen sequences flicker from the gloom. This is the final recce, the final clean & brush mission before the climbing begins, not having a belayer this trip, unless I can coerce Chippy away from skippering An Sulaire, a sgoth Niseach, for a day...or an hour for that matter.

John Murdo MacLeod, building An Sulaire in 1994. This was the first Sgoth Mhor, Big Boat to be made since his grandfather last built one in 1918.

Fancy holding the rope or nipping a few new lines in? There's a whole bouldering wall as well, all of it about 120 seconds from the Traigh na Berigh road. I'll also be developing some more of the Càrlabhagh roadside venue, highball bouldering & short trad at all grades. Less of a stomp to get on some repeat Cioch E8 aye, nice as it is - was - as it has been - as it will continue to be, if I decide on trying the real prize. That of the Cioch under-sling before winter. As for The Gathering? Truth told, it's a fine yet somehow never outstanding climb, ameliorated more through it's aspect than it's audacity, it leaves you feeling charlatan or fraudster, for ignoring the behavioural threat of the beast in its belly, clawing outward into a full frontal do or die face. You celebrate The Gathering, but you do so, looking back over your shoulder in retreat, at the Cioch under-sling - maybe that's my own reasoning, a focus aligned for the arete beyond the dark edge. Crawling out from the solid line of The Gathering, to peek around the arete, is deadly temptation. It felt f7a for the sequence I used, so not technically mind-boggling, & it's more about climbing into total safety, toward obvious gear, rather than away from it...so E7. It would arguably feel a bit harder than f7a for anyone not as at home on the gabbro. Remember, Dave MacLeod has failed on my V12s in Coire Lagan...never mind the harder stuff. Importantly, even without beta-benefit, the gear, body positioning, technicalities of placement on lead, the overall demands of the climb, are pretty straight forward. If I'd nipped away with the first ascent I would have ventured nothing more than mid E7, it makes more overall sense. Like E5 would if it was on the floor & not leaning into an endless void, yet it's a void you are very much aware of. So E7 depending on how much tape you run off the bomber sling as well aye - just my wee joke there. It did lead to some humourous blether though, in which I pointed out that had I of pre-placed the sling I could have run two draws, one hugely extended to protect the lower section & one standard shorty for the ramp above, off the same loop & called it E3, to a healthy ripple of giggling. Anyway, it's about as technically satisfying as Hyperdeemic Nurdle on the huge fallen & twinned clatter of rock below, the Clach Ceann-Feadhna...only the view is better. Hades with a suggested technical grade of f8a+ & crap unobvious, in fact, pointless gear placements, is far more demanding. Don't under-estimate The Gathering though, it is a serious line - another adding a standard apart in the new breed of developing Coire cragsmanship. Collie would freak at the prospect of climbing either of these lines, but I wonder what the likes of those fellas would make of all the horse-shit & idiotic bellowing that often pursues a modern day repeat ascent - when one fella climbs up some holds that another fella climbed up before...becuase, dress it how you like, that's all it is. I doubt my ascent will make a single ripple or the news, since for one, it's me, & it's not: time-stamped by the hand of god, sponsored by Nike, advertised in the sky, quality controlled, PR'd into laborium, witnessed by orbiting spy-satellite, scrutinized into acceptance by everyone inside the self-perpetuating hub-coterie, then thrown to a piping fanfare of pre-arranged media circus who incidently followed me up every hold banging tamborines, in league with an entourage of singing monkeys, reporting live, wearing Red-Bull & Black Diamond t-shirts, singing We're the toughest climbers in Scotland, so long as we ignore everyone elses work we can't repeat... I just went up the rock & went home after. How hard can it be? I will also discuss The State of Scottish Bouldering as a section & subject in my forthcoming lecture this winter, & simply just how, climbing is leaving the winter bogs of Jacksonville, for shiny corporate industry standards, how health & safety will overturn bothy nights & climbers will be paid to model gortex on catwalks instead of climb. It's about seeing how a great mythical beast of a way is becoming ill & staggering, left on the Rannoch reeks...burdened with the modern climbers disease of looking good climbing as you go, rather than climbing good & looking where you're going. I fear it is losing it's soul, in the wake of commercial, pre-packaged ventures with guidelines, the grade bandwagon, quotas to meet & Americans believing that owning a gold american express card will somehow protect them in the death zone of Qomolangma....that's all... So the usual climb-line is up & working again after the phone went for an exposed swim in the Torridonian waters the other week...It was touch & go for a while, but arsing it back across the waters at an unprecedented re-entry speed of 2 knots along the Raasay straits, & using the fan oven as an icu & incubator seems to have ressucitated it adequately...although remembering to take it out before setting the dial at -Tattie & Neep Inferno- has made me feel somewhat of a gifted type o' ghillie...Photies soon - of all the climbing, no the jacket tatties ya bampot. I think an obligatory sniff of Hold Fast at Glen Novice is on for sometime next spring...since the sketch planned jolly will take me in that direction. Anyways, I didn't mean to convey all that news. Just meant to say, I found a great rockshoe...

I'll be away until I get back...