The ribs dont like harnesses, so soloing was the way, albeit just a few routes

Still was good to feel the rock on my skin, the rough love that it is

Hey matey, sorry I didn't make it out that way. Wasn't being ignorant, had an advantageous weather window, a pal visiting for a couple days & that was my only transport out to Neist, since I appear to have won the title of the islands 'numero uno van wrecker from hell' & have no rollerskate of my own at the moment. It's quite a trek round to Reiff, or swim without one...even with one. Yeah the Reiff rough durty durty lovin' is fine. Glad you got some in. DWS was it? Always welcome over this way for some anyway as you know. Clambering not durty lovin'! I'm not like that. Oooo, I dunno though, Emery in a summer frock....

In the mean time, left you a couple of lines to see to.

Emery is busy with young freshers, his mommy would not let him north to play amongst the dark quarry and sharp edges, green slimey walls are all she lets him love.

I need to buy another boulder mat, theres room for more gear, so more gear needs to be bought.

Gutted that not much was climbed at Reiff, but sure it will be there again, unless the storms rage in this winter and cut me a new route or 50.

Now Mr, you about at the start of Nov? how is it for bouldering then? do I need to chip ice from the holds and chase the huskies off the crags?

The UKC totty are having a girls only meet, we may imagine it to be full of sexy young lasses, lycra clad, sweaty and climbing hard. but its UKC, so 2 nights of hard drinking and not many will emerge from the canvas to scale much more than the steps to the shower or to graple with the lippy.

Aye, I'm around in November. The climbing lecture will be done & I'll be firing up the doss heaters in the Coire, carting winter kit down there, cramming mats under strategic rocks to save on pack-muling the crevassed & talussed Gabbro heights & filling in some awesome gaps. There's no deeper love more solitary or alive than the Coire in winter, up at 6am scrubbing holds with a headtorch on, bleeding by 12, numb by 4pm, munching high-carbs in the sac under the line by 7. Hopefully by then, as I swing the creaking gate down by the beach & look up into the cloud base, the only trace of the hardiest campers will be a fading square of yellowed turf on the turn & this knee issue will have eased off a bit as well. It's making it very hard to pull any deep egyptians or high step smears where the pressure goes full on. I'm slowly falling apart I reckon, although stomping back down the Coire path with James the other year, mats flapping on our backs, he blatantly disagreed...He had been taking snaps of me 'for prosperity' trying a stupidly hard & sweaty cave wall of slopers under a boulder in a gushing burn. I eventually got the line & something else fell off so you see, he's kind or blind, one of the two, or both. Aye well...I've seen ice on the holds in November, right through, & worked projects on sub-zero rock until the point of not being able to feel if you have hold of the hold, snot on your lip, blood in your hair. It's not glamourous, but it's how it goes, beyond the thin veneer of gloss climbing clings to. It's solid dirty lovin' & on occasion, it gets results.

Working Darken Down the Day, up in the winter Storm Fields area as we call it, clung to the reeling edges of Sgurr Sgumain & equating numerically as V13 at 3000ft or so, see-saws your body temperature dangerously, making it warm enough by effort to climb in a ragged t-shirt, cold enough to shake your core uncontrollably if you stop for a second to long...it simply drops off that fast. Icicles beside crux moves in winter are an ordinary sight up there & crossing steep frozen waterfall floods the size of shinty pitches, seeping through black overlaps, just shy of the ridge bellowing clouds & ice crystals overhead, warm sunlight streaking way below, can place you quickly inside your own personal escape epic, shrink you to a pin dot below the Cioch, totally alone, blind & out of sight of the keenest eye in the massifs. If you get out of the rage, the grass feels amazing, warm, oxygenated, the ice cracking in the burn, the blood washing away in the water & you boulder in the lowland warmth of marsh unfreezing itself slowly. Depleted you are, in the glen of the long shadows & short winter days, but away from the summit ridge blackness & blizzards, you also are.

Talk like Yoda i will...Stop it I can't.

Here you trace the curve of a bloc from warmth to blue cold, the white prickly frost in the shadow & the air is sharp in the back of your throat. The only vague recognition of that eventful day, beyond the myths you spin into light as a bodach, will appear in some silly climbing magazine trumpeting with supreme confidence that your new lowland boulder grade is one point four notches askew & your high one spot on, but failing with impressive ineptness to relay the preceeding events or the morose beauty of the whole situation you barely slid out of beforehand. On the lower lush you can be sunbathing as people die in panic on the jawline of the ridge...It's had bites out of me & I in turn have had bites out of it, but thats our relationship... AMERATUS PATHUM LABORIUM...But I digress J, I doubt there is a woman out there with blizzard or gabbro proof lippy, who would put up with me going out there like that, who would travel out there adinfinitum to kiss the snow & stone with me, who would put up with my incessant & bitterly glorious personal war with incremental sections of remote rock & injury, so I scarcely glance into that room. I'm shadowed & inconsequential when trundled into paths of beauty. Whenever the cleaning lady opened the curtains in Castle Dracula, our man of teeth, devourer of beasts, afraid of nothing, would crumble aye...It's the same scenario. Besides, I wouldn't have anything above bordering on idiotic to say to one anyway.. And why boulder at Stanage or Dumby? The mobile even works there....Hell, you can probably plug your laptop into the bottom of Angel's Share now & get a humidity report for the top moves...

Aye, it should be good. I'll see what James is up to as well. You have to have a go on his line, Pump Up The Jam, arguably one of the best problems anywhere in the Hebrides, or his new sacrifice, Gabbroman, but in the mean time remember, you are what you eat, so stay away from nuts.

Oh, & bring finger tape - shed loads of it....& pies & an Emery if fate would have it. I'll turn him into a hardy cove. If you bring some tools I'll show you a great DT crag & fling a rope over if it's cats & dogs. We have a monster steep DT10'ish thing on Skye courtesy of myself called Latino Chrome. Top-ropey but technical, even wee Monez took a healthy bite out of it - she's no slouch like. I'm getting quite into monkey acrobatics & attacking the local crag with sharp instruments aye. I blame Tweeders personally. Today as I rattled around packing ropes & digging out my hall cupboard, the Cuillin wore a hat of high meringued cloud strung with a necklace of independant rainstorms, satellites of weather micro-climates, circulating inbetween the sun burning through & steaming the gabbro. Every black rock, when you lost a sense of scale, looked like a fresh warm turd on a wild uncut lawn, dropped by some giant beast roaming from here to Elgol. I did four new lines, one gnarly & the dug clawed up a V5 slab, desperate for height & momentum, trying to get his happy face ball from the top. I should have stayed down there aye, tiny under an awesome darkening sky, inside a flapping tent & eaten things from tins with my fingers & let the collie scavenge his feed of shore crabs...& been poor, & wealthy, all in one go.

It's the way hard climbs get tamed...afterall.

Hard climbs only appear to be tamed, its the climber who is trained. We dont tame a dog, we adapt ourselves to understand what he needs. Maybe.

Right, first weekend of Nov it is Mr, ill pack the mini and be there by the witching hour. V0.5 is where Im at, but i can train and get some energy back into this broken body.

I see some fat bloke from KInlochleven is trying to get involved in the womens only meet. How nice of him to offer to guide people there, its glencoe, the routes are clear, the way is marked, one just follows the road to the pub. No guides needed there.

Was at stanage at the weekend, well monday, empty, rained tho and the belayer wasnt feeling good, Grit loved me and I loved it back if just for a short affair. I forgot how small grit edges were, shocked me.

Looking forward to the trip and some Skye rock action, i hope it doesnt spit be groundwards, still am sure theres room to learn and grow.

As for women, climbing and women are not the easiest of bed fellows, to do what one wants is to be selfish, climbing as a life requires this, we choose, we maybe regret or just grumble, but whatever we choose to love, we love it as best we can.

Top stuff J - looking forward to it. I'll write a coherent & rambling reply after Ive hidden under some water for an hour or two. Top day in the blustery high Coire.