Ramsay Reccy - Eastern Section

Last week myself and Neil decided to reschedule our attempt on the Ramsay to allow us more time to recover from races we had done and also get some more reccies in. Now it looks like we will attempt in mid July starting at 11:am in a clockwise direction. We had thought about a night time start as the first section will be slow anyway. What goes against that theory is that you start already tired so we have decided on a more conventional time. It has also been decided to use the 'Alec Keith' variation. This basically has you starting from higher up Glen Nevis and so you get a warm up on the road before the Ben, which is, unsurprisingly, the highest climb of the round. As this means doing the Loch Treig to Mamore section in the dark we headed out yesterday to check this section out.

Typically I didn't have my camera as the weather was perfect and the views even better. It was a pretty tough run, but checking the splits later that evening I was pleased to see that we were knocking a huge amount of time off the schedule on the climbs. Next time we can afford to take it much easier! I have been struggling with a cold too so I am even more excited that the day out didn't make it any worse. A couple of route choices got sorted as well as we found a couple of decent traverse lines that allow some of the more rocky sections to be avoided. We also got the descent off the Easians sorted for the first time which is excellent news. All in all the hills looked and felt a lot more manageable than I had built them up to be. Still it looks a long way, however I am pretty confident in getting round even if not in under 24h.

I think I will do another short run over part of the Mamores to check out the eastern most three. It is all looking up and hopefully the attempt itself will go as smoothly as the run did yesterday.

Dist 20 miles Time 5h 38min

Pabbay and Mingulay - Easy climbing routes exist too!

Mingulay and Pabbay, which lie off the southern end of the chain of islands making up the Outer Hebridies, are well known for the quality of the rock climbing and it was for that reason I have always wanted to visit. However, when the chance finally came I was aprehensive in the extreme as I hadn't been climbing well for years and sea cliffs have always been a particular nemisis of mine. I flicked through the guidebook and could find very littel under E1 and this was reinforced whilst trawling for tinformation on the internet. With this in mind I packed the kayaks together with the absolute minimum of climbing gear and thought that my climbing would be limited to some bouldering. Still the lure of a bagging a couple of Marilyns would mean that even if I got no climbing done it wouldn't have been a 'wasted' trip.

Even with the efforts to keep kit to the smallest amount possible we had a mountain of kit which was a real effort to get on and off the ferry from Oban and subsequently on to the small boat charted to get us out from Barra to the islands. Donald and his boat Boy James did a sterling job of delievering everything and everyone on to Pabbay. The beach and campsite were idylic. The island was much greener than expected and the beach would make the pages of any tourist brochure to the Carribean. The only slight downer was the relative lack of water, but the weather has been exceptionally dry for the past month.

Whilst the others set off to the Allanish Pensiular on the west coast I decided to check out a couple of crags opposite the campsite. To my surprise and delight I found a couple of very decent walls and spent a good few hours bouldering and soloing on rock that was never more than VDiff in grade. It is no exagaration that I didn't hold or step on a single loose hold. Testiment to the ferocity of the winter gales that help to keep the crags clean. In fact the holds were so good that even steep looking lines succumbed realtively easily. The topo below gives some idea of the routes which were about 10m long. Okay, not the most spectacular crag but only 10min walk from the beach.

The next day was spent checking out the boulders that were situated high up near the highest point of the island which has a trig point. Basically drop south east from the summit and in 5 min there are loads of 4-5m high walls of perfect rock with scores of problems at about the V0 (easy) level with superb grassy landings.

The 'Sugarloaf' boulder located in the col just before the final rise to the trig point i.e. north of the summit, probably had the best bit of bouldering on the island with a couple of harder problems which I had to get a rope on to do in comfort.

Not everyone is as happy to boulder as I am, but the other members of the group were well contented with the routes that they climbed and not all in the top-end grades either. Quality routes at VDiff and Severe were in enough abundance to keep most happy. Of course there are much longer and harder routes, but they are all documented so I don't need to mention them here.

After a further day on my 'Crag X' and fishing for Pollack we decamped to Mingulay. Mingulay seemed a lot more lush than Pabbay and the water supply was much better and the campsite even better. Evenings were spent soaking up the evening rays and watching seals play in the surf or sun themselves on the beach.



Here again with a bit of a sense of adventure you could quite happily climb at the lower grades without running out of things to do. On MacPhee's hill there is even a short inland crag covered in routes not much harder than VDiff. I am sure that the dedicated rock jocks will say that by not climbing in the high E grades on the massive cliffs you are missing the point. In a certain respect they are right, but climbing on perfect rock is relatively rare in Scotland so the chance to do amidst the puffins and seals isn't a bad substitute.


One day myself and Emly took a walk down the coast and chanced upon a rocky prominatory, primarily to watch the puffins from. I scared myself on a steep boulder problem and then put on the rope and discovered a perfect Diff. A great mix of steep steps and delicate slabs and would be worth a least one star on any other crag in the country. Whilst belaying Emily up the climb a seal came to watch and played for a while in the swell.

The next day was still so we headed out in the kayaks to photograph the climbing crags. On the way we looked over to Bernary and it looked so close and as the conditions for paddling couldn't have been any better we decided to chance it. After all the anticipation when we thought that the crossing would be too hard it was an easy 10min paddle. We walked up to the lighthouse to check out the cliffs. The cliffs on the south side were awe inspiring, 200m of steep rock with a multitude of seabirds of all different species constantly whirring about the ledges.

A last day was spent seconding slightly harder routes near the campsite which did involve abseiling and hanging belays. Again the rock was magnificant and plenty of new, or at least unrecorded, lines to climb. All the islands were idyllic and I definetly will be back and even find some new crags or routes that have escaped notice so far! There is no need for climbers of a moderate standard to be put off from going by stories of mamoth abseils and everything going at E5 or above. Saying that I really shouldn't be encouraging people to go just for the selfish freason of wanting the place to myself!