Petestack Blog

Today I was climbing with Johnny at Polldubh, where we also had the good fortune to bump into Ed and Rona. (more…)

I’ve got my brother Angus here at the moment to do some climbing and, in spite of having to work round some pretty uncooperative weather, we’ve managed to get some good stuff done. (more…)

Tonight I was climbing with Al Halewood on Scimitar Buttress at Polldubh, where we did Nutcracker Chimney (steeply awkward HS 4b, and Al’s lead because I’d done it before… in 1990!) and Diagonal Crack (simply steep VS 4c, and my lead). (more…)

Having serious intentions of improving my technique with both personal climbing and coaching youngsters in mind, I’d bought Dan Hague and Douglas Hunter’s The Self-Coached Climber back in January and started to read it. But then I’d largely moved outside for rock climbing with the coming of better weather at Easter, and only just started to work systematically at the exercises this week with some rainy summer holiday days to tempt me back onto the wall. (more…)

Taking a long drive north in search of the best (least bad!) conditions yesterday, Jamie Bankhead and I set off with Skye in mind but finally diverted (after spying the Cuillin shrouded in thick cloud) to the Stone Valley Crags on the south-west side of Loch Maree. (more…)

Finding myself on my own and wanting to make use of a glorious summer Friday with poorer weather forecast for the weekend, today’s original objective was to solo Castle Ridge (Mod), after which a descent by Ledge Route (Easy) should follow naturally. But somehow (thinking ‘why stop there when it won’t take that long and there’s plenty more to do on the Ben?’) my wishlist for a perfectly-formed day soon grew to take in the ascent of Tower Ridge (Diff) and traverse of the Carn Mor Dearg Arete. So that’s what I did… (more…)

On Tuesday I was back at the Ardnamurchan Ring Crags with Lorenzo and Chuck, but this time on Achnaha Buttress and Sron nan Gabhar rather than the honeypot Meall an Fhir-eoin Beag. (more…)

Today (with the forecast suggesting potentially showery weather everywhere with the possible exception of the east) Chuck and I decided to skip the long drive and take our chances with somewhere relatively local. So we headed for the intriguing sounding Indian Slab Crag up Glen Gour on the far side of the Corran Ferry, which promised good multipitch VS slab climbing on clean, rough gneiss with poor protection (‘not over protected’, to quote the usual guidebook euphemism!) and ‘dubious belays’. And that’s exactly what we got… (more…)