Petestack Blog

Today I was up at Polldubh assisting Outward Bound Loch Eil with climbing and abseiling sessions for our own first year pupils from Kinlochleven High School. So the May weather still wasn’t great (alternating sunny spells and heavy showers), but I set up this morning’s abseil and ran the bottom rope for our climbers on SW Buttress, then set up another abseil at the same venue and ran that this afternoon. I was working with Alex and Hannah this morning, and Alan and John this afternoon (hope I’ve spelled everyone’s names right!). All very useful practice with the SPA Assessment now just days away, and a nice chance for the pupils and me to work together outside our normal classroom environment.

Not long after I got home from work this afternoon (and was just starting to think about making use of a fine evening to mow the grass), Daniel rang to ask if I fancied going climbing. So I quickly realised that the grass didn’t really need doing after all and ten minutes later was heading up the road to Polldubh, where we climbed Pandora and Bullet (both Severe). (more…)

So perhaps I regard myself as a solid VS leader these days, but occasionally (currently just twice in eighteen years!) one bites back and last night it was Crybaby… (more…)

Having posted a pre-SPA Assessment appeal on the UKC Forums for work experience opportunities within reasonable travelling distance (quote ‘would certainly consider anywhere in Scotland and possibly northern England’), I was fortunate to get the offer of an interesting day working a charity abseil from Carlisle’s 41 metre Civic Centre with well-known MIA David Hooper. (more…)

Ask anyone familiar with Polldubh to list its VS classics and you’d expect to see Phantom Slab and The Old Wall high up alongside Damnation and Resurrection. So, having done the first pair just once each and not been on either since 1991, I was keen to revisit them and teamed up with Jim at last night’s breezily sunny Polldubh Club meet to climb them again. (more…)

It’s been an uncharacteristically miserable start to May, but things are looking better with what appears to be a drier spell starting yesterday… (more…)

Yesterday was historically ‘Polldubh Day’ in more ways than one with the arrival of my first edition Klaus Schwartz/Blyth Wright guide, the first regular outdoor meet of the Polldubh Club and some 50th anniversary ascents of Ian Clough’s Wanderlust. (more…)

It’s been quite a week for both personal climbing and the future of the sport in Lochaber… (more…)

So here I was, on my last day of Easter holiday, leaving a *sunny* Lochaber early yesterday morning to go cragging a good three hours’ drive away up Glen Clova and wondering who to blame… Sonya Drummond from Angus, for telling us all that Proud Corner has got to be the BEST single pitch VS EVER? Simon Davidson from Edinburgh, for hijacking my Polldubh Anniversary thread on Sunday evening to suggest climbing together? Me, for listening to Sonya and suggesting Clova to Simon when he was happy to meet me at a more convenient Weem, Dunkeld or even my home patch of (sunny) Glen Nevis? Or maybe even all three? :-P (more…)

Have to say that the Polldubh 50th Anniversary Game took a bit of a nosedive yesterday with a nice morning developing into a wet afternoon just when I was about to go out (meaning that I had to go running instead!), but I still took myself up there today and did two of the four Sullivan/Clough routes ‘scheduled’ for yesterday. Started by shunting Iche (I swear that overlap’s easier than Damnation’s!) and soloing Pine Wall before heading up to Secretaries’ Buttress to shunt Twitch (John Cunningham’s brilliant little pitch of Etive-style padding) and finishing by soloing Enigma on High Crag.

So Iche and Enigma might strictly have been a day too late for the ‘game’, but it was a nice, sunny day (odd spits of rain just as I finished rigging Twitch, then some more as I drove past Corran Ferry on the way home) and I got my first 5a and 5b pitches of the season, so it was definitely worth the trip. And it’s still game on AFAIC, because at least I made the effort! :-)