Happy 21st to local climber Megan Macrae pictured here on the crux of Superblue (7b+) at Creag Nan Luch - not far from her home.

Creag Nan Luch (Crag of the Mouse) is one of Scotland’s best sports crags and is found at the West end of Loch Maree near Poolewe and Gairloch. For more information see Superblue (7b+) below.

Tags: Superblue, Creag Nan Luch

April has brought some of the best mountaineering and climbing conditions we've seen for a few years. The month started cold and dry with a few frosts down to sea level. As the days turned increasingly sunny, a sharp easterly breeze with very low humidity meant the North West Highlands had the best weather in the UK. All of these pictures were taken in the last two weeks. The first shows the snow-capped Torridon mountains taken from the Melvaig peninsula; the second is action at the sheltered south-facing Kuhjo Crag near Gairloch; the third is An Teallach taken on a guided day out to the summits.

Tags: Kuhjo Crag, An Teallach, Wester Ross

Loch Tollaidh Crags, Wester Ross, is the best single pitch trad venue around Gairloch. The climbing is always technical and sustained. To get a real appreciation of the quality of the climbing here you need to be operating at HVS and up.
Hidden Crag has the longest routes and the rock is truly immaculate clean, rough Lewisian Gneiss. Water Lily, E2 5b, and Buena Vista, also E2 5b, are classics. It is very hard to decide which is the better of the two so it is best just to do both!
Paul Tattersall and Jim Buchanan are hard at work updating the Loch Tollaidh Crags topo for wildwesttopos.com with over sixty new routes to add since the original topo was published, it will be ready for this spring.

Tags: Loch Tollaidh Crags

Over winter we've decided to profile some of the best routes in the North West - so thanks to Jim Buchanan of Wild West Topos for these awesome pictures of Michael Lee on Superblue - graded 7b+. This line follows an overhanging curving crack line on a bulge of perfect gneiss at Creag Nan Luch (Crag of the Mouse) at the West end of Loch Maree near Poolewe and Gairloch. Strenuous moves lead to a tricky and powerful crux at the top of the crack.
This route was bolted by gofurther's Paul Tattersall just after the first clutch of routes were equipped in the middle section of the crag. Several more routes have since been added on the upper and lower tier starting at around 6a.
The range of routes available make this a perfect venue if you are moving from indoor cragging to sport routes or if you looking to push your grade with coaching on technique. See our rock climbing pages for more.

Wild West Topos produce a range of easy-to-use photo-topos of the best rock venues in the area.

Tags: Climbing, sport Climbing

The recent spell of incredible weather saw some new sport routes added over the Christmas period. After Murdo, Paul and Colin first equipped a series of 7s on the main wall a few other lines are now established on Goat Crag. Most recently, Paul Tattersall finished a line left of Teepee - Tom Paine's Bones at 6c. Nearby, Am Fasgadh finally has a sensible warm up thanks to Ian Taylor - The Groove 6b+, the right hand line of bolts following the groove - vaguely.
Right of The Crack (7b) Paul has also bolted The Shield at 7a+ which has rapidly become a classic. Left of The Crack, Ian Taylor and Lawrence Hughes equipped Primo - 7c - which goes all the way up the headwall of perfect rock above the quartz band to a lower-off at 25m. Thanks also to Murdo for sorting out several of the lower-offs at this crag before he was injured. More on Goat crag and Am Fasgadh soon.

The picture shows Jenny Cunningham and Paul 'Storkey' getting to grips with Mac Talla and The Prow respectively at Goat Crag.

Tags: sport Climbing, rock Climbing, goat crag, Am fasgadh, mac talla, the sheild

The settled spell clung on until Christmas day before it broke down completely on Boxing day. This picture was taken at about 1.30pm on Christmas day looking North East to Beinn Ghoblach. Again, it was taken from close to the summit of Carn na Glaic Buidhe where we stumbled on this promising sandstone erratic. It doesn't look like there are any decent vertical problems but, as it overhangs on three sides, it may be worth a visit to train on the 360 degree traverse.

Tags: Bouldering

The gofurther team were hoping to bring you some news about new routes on some of the best sports crags in Scotland; but that will have to wait. Instead we have some bad news at the end of the year....This is a picture of Murdo on Mac Talla (7b) at Goat Crag. Taken the day before he had a serious accident in Torridon. While we're assured he will be fine, he's expecting to be out of action for at least six months and probably around a year. We all wish him as fast a recovery as is possible and a complication-free 'rest'.
Murdo will be sorely missed at the crag, on the mountain and around the table afterwards.

Tags: murdo, goat crag

There was a buzz of activity in the Gairloch Leisure Centre last Saturday afternoon (November 24th) as well over a hundred people of all ages tried their luck at the Gairloch Climbing Wall Event.
The activities circuit involved 12 stations. Scaling any (or all four) of the routes set up on the climbing wall was the main challenge. Some of the other stations were; doing pull-ups, teetering along a balancing frame, knot tying, and completing a climbing quiz. Points were awarded and scores were kept with prizes for the top three in various age categories.
The event was primarily organized to raise local awareness of the campaign to get the existing climbing wall upgraded and expanded. On the day £450 was raised towards the project. Estimates for the cost of a new wall have come in at around £100,000. Through a local contact, petro-chemical business Ineos offered £25,000 towards the cost which gave the whole idea a kick start. Having applied to various funding bodies to try and find the remaining £75,000 needed the best hope seems to lie with Sportscotland, a government body, who have intimated they would fund 45-50% if the other 50-55% is secured. So there is still a lot of fund raising to do, any ideas then please get in touch.

The organisers of saturday's event, Jim Sutherland and go further Scotland's Paul Tattersall, would like to thank everyone for coming along and making it such fun, with a big thanks to all who helped out behind the scenes and on the day. Thanks also to the local people and businesses that kindly donated raffle prizes and to the generous prize sponsors, namely Torridon Activities, W D MacPherson & Sons Climbing Shop in Inverness, North West Outdoors in Ullapool, Tiso in Inverness, Craigdon Mountain Sports in Inverness and Rua Reidh Lighthouse near Gairloch.
There certainly were a lot of little smiling faces at the end of the prize giving.

Tags: Gairloch, Climbing Wall, Climbing