Looking back down onto The Phial - E7, with Kilt & Rubha Hunish across the reeks. The Phial is the presiding elder over scampering V-grades & awesome bouldered talus, dragged & clattering through the crevassed floor of mighty Cairn Liath. Just as with Fontainebleau, where a V13 can co-exist beside a V0, you can end up with an E7 next-door to a VDiff on the same fin of rock at Carn Liath, maybe a direct on a meander, or a new line variant or blank space filled, without anything becoming contrived, controversial or eliminate. There is room for it all & still loads of gaping blank columnar climbing be tamed. This place is also home to an untouched face but for one climb, the critical, wild & audacious line of Iconoclast - E9/10, & with every move verging on a state of crisis, it will remain Skye's hardest route by far, for some time to come. The line has become referred to in certain localized bletherings as 'the reluctant E10'...since I have so far refused to grade it into the silly club, despite a few stubborn petitions, or with more wit, it gets called the Ronseal Arete. Either way, a leader fall would kill you...no second chances. I should post up the black & chrome sequence shots of red-point leading Iconoclast one day...They drip with commitment, fear & inspiration, like the guarded secrets we have kept under the radar, inside the amphitheatres of Carn Liath itself. For the majority of climbers, the photo above will be the first online glimse they have had into the internal & precipitous abyss of Carn Liath..If Wilson Moir's excellent route Lunatic Fringe, is the leafy arboured driveway to insanity, Iconoclast is banging on the doors of the nuthouse asking to be let in...

A couple of E9 repeats are on the cards for the future...maybe Achemine or Hold Fast in 2007 before my joints pack in completely.

Smcj updates of all lines old & new are afoot...Lee is busy putting the topo together with James & I'm away to point Niall McNair & Emma in the direction of an untouched Traigh na Berigh gem of a sea-cliff, if I can find them & the rain holds off. If not, a bit of wet-suit cliff plummeting might be on the menu...