Hey bud. Thanks for helping me fathom becoming an official part of your blog. I must not spam, I must not spam. Well climbed on the Meagaidh that day btw! Flippin' lunatic. Any thoughts on numbers yet? VIII/IX/9? I thought you were going to rip big style several times. Looked horrid from below you man. Maybe you should add that your prehistoric Stubai krab wasn't loaded into the system. I wouldn't lead a kitten around the garden on that thing!

Up for some more John Mellencamp on loop yet? lol

Finn.

Not a problem on the blog front, just write your graffiti on the walls as you mean to..

'Hard' boy, that's what grade it is. Real hard, & chilly aye. Some very bouldery tensioned moments which suited me totally. Scrabbling around trying to get a mono-point to stick & ambush the pendulum on each shift while watching powder grains swirl away below your toes doesn't carry well with me. Does it anyone? Heat generation, full stretch reaches, & power drain locks above a crap bit of pro, way beyond the comfort zone makes any steepness reel. That's liveable if your head isn't asking you to check in with your mortality. Like I said in the bar, the worst bit was the reach out rightward over the void onto that tip edge, gingerly creaking wieght on, beyond retreating back to the left axe & lunging up - trusting it wasn't going to snap violently...that would've been that if it did...brrr. As it is, the Iliad line would make a good thumpy E-lead in summer but in the conditions we had, 'thin ice' would cover it in both senses of the word aye. Well, as you saw, when I eventually got psyched to do it & stopped pacing. Shame on me...Thanks for holding the rope & not running away. Bit of Coir' del Grhunnda bouldering soon on your project? Gotta get that roof James gave me nailed as well. It's time for fighting back is drawing to a close...

Mellencamp - you're getting old before your time. F*ck me! Get some Deftones in your ears & bring more than one tape for a 3 day excursion next time or I'll use it as a firelighter for the next ceilidh bonfire. Top jolly either way aye. Cats & dogs on the island right now, so I'm slumming indoors. Still can't find that Spectre, so check your sac, the storm cover partition maybe. Anyways, bit odd blethering here, give it a ring why not...

Monez is still whinning about that paper-cut she got tooling her obsession. I reckon' that'll be the name of the line when the top admits defeat..

Easy Dude, Im suffering from serious weather problems, good weather comes when at work and when at the base of a mountain, it rains, snows and blows. Im a valley tourist.

Hope all well, drop me a line when you next on the mainland. I see the famed Finn, is now a cyber invisible man.

Check out my photo site link of my blog

J

Aye Finn is beavering away quietly somewhere, writing a few pieces, my blindfold bouldering regime being one; in between chasing girlies & stealing my Font jelly molds from Raasay for his attic I imagine. He latched onto a blether we had a while back, wholeheartedly, more so I guess, after the physical demo: What happens to movement when it becomes a question of internal balance, brail & intuitive responses, zero visual input... It was rhetorical aye. It kinda evolved from a session of no visual input on a certain Coire V11, in which he played spotter, & from idly sitting under the Iniquity link-up through It's Over into PT, discussing the motivation, the thesis behind it all. That was after I'd landed on him for the 50th time, stamped on his camera & sandwiches, covered the fella in a chalk explosion & stepped in a bog drain almost up to the knee, wearing my shiny Evolvs. Some day aye. The line got nailed that evening after they dried atop of the Venom & Finns retort went something like:

Well done, I'm glad that's over, I'm happy for you, I'm happy for bouldering - thank f*ck - it's dark, I'm cold & can we please get over Carbost way for a pint & tatties.

Thought it would be easier to give him blog rights to write up things from another perspective since we hoodlum together more often than not...ohno...he can spam now. Yikes!

Cyber visible man now surely. Aye I'll give you a bell valley tourist. Bit of Camel riding? or Rock Dust? Liking the new photo site! I'll link you up with the side bar old son. Side bar that is, not mini-bar.

i never said tatties man! it was neep onion bake. but not bad for a man who drives a motorbike at 100+ blasting john denvers country roads or that annie song, skinning random sheep and ferry hoppers into the coire. you need to slow down. dumbuck in 2 hours was frightening.

Ah you see I thought Finn as ya Dug! I feel I need to change my name to something less pronouncable, suggestions?

Im searching for energy, strength and a lack of weight. Ive a problem, its Repentance and it looks like it will go at V2 ish. I cant get on it tho as there is no sun, there is only work work work,

Finn isn't well enough behaved to be my dog & as far as I'm aware he can't lick his own spuds either. Well, I say that but he's never tried to do it when he's shared my battered old Quasar. Maybe he's a shy sorta' cove aye. Equally the dog has no idea how to sign into the blog or belay with any great effect. The dug goes out in the same coat every night - Finn has several. Finn has repeated a Coire V11/12 cleanly - whereas the dog tried to claim a V8 but cheated by dynoing the whole line, effectively slam-dunking the top in true collie style. It's a question of ethics I guess. If you poo'd on the butchers doorstep would you expect a bone?
If I tell Finn to sit, he wanders off - If I tell the dog to sit, he wanders off...The dog eats food off the floor - Finn eats kebabs off the floor...Ok, I'll give you that one, but he also can't stay on the Trans-Alp riding pillion with a wieght of climbing gear lashed to his back. Even without a haul sac of gear, his ears create to much drag anyway aye. The dogs, not Finns.

In the Gaelic for your own personal unpronouncability, you'd be Seán Mac an t-Sealgair, adding Mac to emphasize you are the, son of Hunter. Or:

جون [John]
صياد, قناص, الباحث عن كذا, كلب أو فرس الصيد [Hunter]

in Arabic. So when you think of someone like John Hannah, Hannah being the Arabic equivilent of John, over there, or in with the Omani fellas, he'd be a Longjohn or a Johnjon...Head fried yet?

Ill be staying a Hunter, go to Hunterston, down in the southern west reaches of this bonny country.

Who is Mellencamp? Before my time I expect.

Im off to my county soon, to taste the wet grit again, trick isnt the climbing, its avoiding the sinking sand at the bottom, well its mud, but many a boulderer has vanished to return as a Peat Bog man 1 million years on, sticky shoes and chalk remain as testament to the physically driven world we live in.

Skye calls, but so do many things, get me fit and light and Ill send one of you problems in the Coire, or just fall off back to the juice bar or somewhere.

What a day today on Skye! Up at 6.00am & after half an hour of sipping brews & wieghing up the dawn cloud cover, I packed the axes, flask, dog, football, stickies & brushes, & set myself on trucking on up into the 20mtr calcareous sandstone overhangs. When I left I was wrapped in my Rab jacket, thermal hatted, quietly tapping along the lanes through braes to erratic bird chorus, only briefly interrupted by Nobby, wearing a contorted face, pressed into the windscreen of the red scud, wrapped in lunatic delivery concentration. He beamed as he approached, rattling at mach 4 & went back to his concentrated scowl before the van turbulence even hit me.

Mad as a lorry that fella, I thought to myself. Then everything went back to how it was before...

Through the shotgun loch paths, over stone walls. Take the long drag up through where the hogweed grows in summer. The crunch of frosted grass leaves you to icicles & solid mud before the crag fills your vision. I settled under Latino Chrome arranging kit, kicking sheep shit down the steep incline into the sea loch. A brew later, I was set for tooling all day, & what a day it's been. A few hundred meters of steep traversing all told, setting myself headgame technical problems to escape up...then some more overlap roofs, then more traversing.

Am I trying to get good at going sideways? Do i secretly aspire towards becoming a sideways beach dancer with castanets?

By midday I was down to a ragged old T-shirt, trying wild footless campus moves, the sun slowly creeping into my cocoon of shadowed cold air, my protected world beneath a stone umbrella of enormous overbite. By midday I had more dust in my skin than a hoover bag, more grit in my mouth than John Wayne, electric hair & an empty flask. After a quick psychological gear herding session, I found also, that after several highball dismounts from the 3rd overlap of LC, I also owned a single highly dense entity that carried a vague resemblence to lots of little independant apricots...Even the food was having a good time. By midday I was also happily wearing several fine abrasions & a numb hoof, which I'd given myself by deftly swinging the tappy end of the axe into my ankle while wrestling an out-of-control figure 4 contortion. By 3pm I had tendons resembling strung ferry mooring ropes & the dog had also joined in with the electric hair thing. The cold shadowed air was moistening in the heat of the day & orange flies had started to gang up on me in legions. The sheep shit was on nasal march as well. I was sweating lactic acid through a body searching every anatomical niche for a recognizible sugar count. By 4pm, the collie & myself had retreated back from the hieghts & jumped gleefully into the sea loch with his football, having jogged the hillside in the heat. The instant Harold Lloyd style rock leap & contact with wintering February sea water was a shocker & I never once stopped to think, even in mid flight, that there was snow just above the tooling crag, that this wasn't a late summers day....but what a day. Didn't see a twitcher, farmer, bagger or climber either. Nice. As for the mid-low toolering traverse, that's a Hole In The Rain, D9.

I guess I'm just hoping since I've had my share of a good day, it will nip over & follow you down for the grit session, dry the peat bogs & keep a cool wind on those slopers for gurning. I'd come wi you if you said Cow & Calf aye. Havn't played there in years but a tiptoe up that arete south of the boulder again...

The Coire will be here for later aye J, as will the juice bar - & don't break the rollerskate....maaaaaan.

The days of sun too often involve me staring out of a window at the perfect day, boulders calling me, only to be wet and dark when I can respond. Today it rains where the Don and the Ury meet, a day of PC mouse driving or is it a Moose up here?

The grit will be Lancashires finest, solo mission, squeeze in some family time, the younger version of me has a house, give it 2 weeks before its burnt down.

Catch me another time, a lift from this bonny small country to where the grit flows like a river from Lancashire thru the Peak.

Aretes and face abound, holds lacking, grip factor high.

Ill easily hold a rope or 2 for ya and not get off the ground on the second, be prepared to get your own gear out tho.

Oh and the Rollerskate died, its a toy mini car now!

Aye, well try pushing a moose around on your desk all day. That's why we have infamously strong fingers for crimping North of the wall.