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A video still on the send of Lithium 8B+, Arisaig. Yesterday, I sent my project in the Arisaig Cave. Nine years after Johan first told me about the cave, that’s me climbed all the good lines. Time to move on! I’ll really miss the place. I’ll miss driving west on the Road to The Isles, leaving behind torrential rain or snow in Fort William, to arrive into bright sunshine as you hit the coast at Lochailort. I’ll miss watching otters and sea eagles going about their business on the beachfront by the cave, as I went about mine. I’ll miss a pre-climb brew in the Arisaig caf, looking out to Eigg. And of course I’ll miss the superbly physical and technical climbs. In many ways, my days at the cave have helped me to see just how much climbing helps me with life. Given that the climb is almost 50 moves long, in the past few weeks as I’ve reached the stage of redpoint attempts, I’ve needed to rest for the best part of an hour between tries. This experience took me back to doing the same, seven y...

The Fort from Nevis Landscape Partnership on Vimeo . I’m delighted to share a film we shot last summer for the Nevis Landscape Partnership , and premiered at the Fort William Mountain Festival last month. It’s my first archaeology film!  The Iron Age fort of Dun Deardail in Glen Nevis always caught my eye when walking off the summit of Ben Nevis after a winter climb. It’s striking ring-like remains on the summit of a conical hill across the glen always catches the late afternoon sun. I always resolved to find out more about the fort but never did. So it was great to hear that the Nevis Landscape Partnership had arranged a three-year project to excavate the fort for the first time, and that myself and Claire would be filming it this year. I’m always fascinated to learn something about scientific disciplines I know little about and the archaeologists I interviewed during the excavation were great to listen to and really opened my mind to think about the themes of archaeology in ge...

Natalie Berry on The Original 7B, the classic of the cave. Pic: Chris Prescott/ Dark Sky Media I've been meaning to prepare a topo of the Arisaig Cave for ages. I've also made a PDF version of it here if you want to print it and take it with you. Enjoy! The cave offers a weatherproof medium-hard bouldering venue that is in good condition for at least 6 months of the year. In the dark Lochaber months from October until February, it can often be the only outdoor rock climbing on offer, at least on the wettest days. There are not a huge humber of climbs, but the ones that are there are good quality, generally long and involved and so provide good entertainment. I opened the first problems in 2009 and still have not quite climbed all the obvious lines. Most of the problems were opened by me and have not had many repeats so the grades may still need adjustment. The rock is quartzite, relatively kind on the skin, but the climbing is generally powerful and gives a good workout. All o...

Get the left hand squeezed a few mm to the left, and the move works! Photo: Chris Prescott/ Dark Sky Media Two days on my project in the cave this week, in the company of Chris Prescott, Natalie Berry and Kevin Woods. On the first day it was still a bit warm and I was feeling pathetic on the climb. I was full of thoughts and chat about sacking it for the season. Maybe it has to be mid-winter for this project? An hour later, a couple of blasts of wind came soon before my second redpoint of the day, and next thing I got three moves further. Maybe I should not be so hasty to call it. After a rest day we were back, with a cold front having passed over. Yet the day started off very badly and still I struggled. There are a couple of themes I have noticed in the cave. I always seem to do better on this project late in the session, when my skin is getting thin. I’m not certain why. It may be something to do with the smooth rock. It gets a bit ‘glassy’ if skin is too thick. Also, I’m noticing I...

highpoint March 3rd from Dave MacLeod on Vimeo . The video above is my best effort so far on the project, from a couple of sessions ago when conditions were quite good. Yesterday, I went to the project in Arisaig and was slapped. Here are my list of excuses (feel free to skip directly to the following paragraph): Still tired from a new mixed route 48 hours before. Humid conditions. Skin too thick. Not enough sleep. New boots I hadn’t tried before or broken in. Too weak. Too heavy. Too many days away from the training board. Still, I learned a lot, so the time was not wasted. I have been here before on many projects. None as hard as this, but the stages are often similar. Often, at least at my age, the lessons are not really new things you didn’t know, but crucial reminders of things that are easy to forget. The first thing reminder was how important the small details are. My ankle must have been a tiny bit stiff from winter climbing a couple of days before. Who knows how little, but...

A couple of teetery moves on the second pitch of Cloudjumper VIII,9 on Ben Nevis Towards the end of February, Scotland kicks off with good conditions for just about everything at the same time. It’s important to be organised to capitalise on it. I have not been this year. My efforts in the Arisaig Cave have been paying off with excellent progress on my project there. I have now got to the start of the crux section and got good overlapping halves, after several hard training sessions and hard sessions on the project. So the climbing part has been going great. The trouble is that sessions on it do leave me feeling pretty wasted, with a lot of recovery to do. I realise that these sessions necessitate extra sleep to recover from them properly. I go home, eat dinner, it’s 9 or 10pm and I still have a lot of work to do. I try to work until 11pm, but I never get enough done and it runs to midnight or sometimes after. This is okay if you can catch up the next morning (I am a night owl and this...