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

Apamapa is a really useful guide to Gaelic place-names in Wester Ross. Written by local Gaelic expert Nevis Hulme, the online and map-based guide lists many of the Gaelic hill and mountain names in some of the most popular mountain-walking areas. The Northern Ross-shire pack for example, covers the An Teallach, Fisherfield Six, Slioch, Torridon, Beinn Dearg, Fannich and Ben Wyvis areas. Click on the Apamapa logo for more.

Tags: Gaelic

This weekend saw some stormy cold weather sweep over the North West bringing some wild winter conditions to the higher tops. This picture, taken yesterday, is from the summit of Sgurr Fiona on An Teallach looking south to Gleann Na Muice.The strong south westerly brought significant snow showers that settled above 800 meters.

The picture below was taken from near the summit of Sgurr Creag an Eich along the North West Ridge of An Teallach. The furthest point on this ridge that you can see is the 760 meter summit - Sgurr Ruadh. Half way along the ridge you can make out the Coastguard Rescue helicopter which set down to drop off members of Dundonnell Mountain Rescue Team. These pictures were taken during a training exercise with DMRT.

Tags: An Teallach, Winter

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