The settled spring conditions have given way to .....settled hot weather with temperatures well above 20c for the past two days and a high pressure system set in to the East. This picture was taken looking North West towards the mouth of Little Loch Broom at just after 9pm on Wednesday.

Tags: Little Loch Broom

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

A very early Easter. Two weeks of bitterly cold northerly weather which has left the hills of Wester Ross plastered in snow. Forecast is for it to stay cold for a few more days. Views of Loch Toll an Lochain from the SE ridge of Bidean a' Ghlas Thuill, the highest summit of An Teallach at 1062m, taken on Wednesday 19th March.

Tags: An Teallach

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

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

Although forecast for broken sunshine, December 29th brought a long spell of miserable horizontal hail and sleet. Winter days like this present their own challenges such as difficult navigation while staying out of the worst winds. For example, on Thursday Helen, Simon and Tom were undaunted by the early conditions and wanted to stick to our plan of a winter skills day on An Teallach. After reaching the top of Mac is Mathair in a howling gale we crossed the plateau north of the main summits well above the cloud level to the coll just north of Bidein a' Ghlas Thuill - one of the two An Teallach munros. The wind was far less fierce here and the cloud broke for us long enough to get a view of the vast Glass Tholl corrie. As the weather eased we reached that top before descending back to the coll (pictured). After practising some ice axe arrests, we then dropped down the long path North East to Dundonnell. The whole day took about nine hours. Check out our winter pages for more options.

Tags: An Teallach, Winter

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

Winter Solstice in the North West Hightlands was spectacular this year. Not a breath of wind, wall to wall sunshine and bitterly cold in the shade. It was a stunning end to a long, dry, cold and sunny spell of fantastic rock climbing weather. In the picture (which was taken at about 1pm on Winter Solstice) Colin is standing on one of the many gneiss boulders that are a feature of the Gruinard, Poolewe and Gairloch area. Very often these large boulders are found on, or near to, the summits of small hills near the major rivers or near other natural features. Some of us find it difficult to believe that these boulders are simply the result of natural erosion. It's almost as if they were carefully positioned for reasons long forgotten. The one above is near the summit of Carn na Glaic Buidhe above Badlurach and the one below is found on the knoll just south of the Carnmore bothy.

Tags: solstice, Winter

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

The weather has suddenly turned much milder but the sunrises are no less dramatic. Forecast is for a long spell of settled sunny weather for the far north.

A spell of more settled, frosty weather has brought with it a series of stunning sunrises and sunsets in the North West. This picture was taken today looking South East along Little Loch Broom, Dundonnell. The peak on the right is Mac is Mathair which is part of the An Teallach massif - the most dramatic mountain on the Scottish mainland. Sometimes spelt Mac 'us Mathair this unusual Gaelic name means 'Son and Mother' in English. Some local people think this explains the title 'An Teallach' because 'teallach' may derive from the Gaelic word 'teaghlach' which means 'family'. Nearly all mountain guide books, however, reckon An Teallach means the 'forge'.

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

Welcome to the revamped and updated go further Scotland website. We'll be using this new news page to keep you up-to-date with everything mountain, climbing, and mountaineering related in North West Scotland: news about conditions, the weather, our activities, offers, trips, new courses and much more......

First of all happy birthday to our newest guide - Murdoch Jamieson - who joined the team this summer. Murdo is a local climber and all-round mountaineer who just happens to be an awesome guide. See about us for more on the go further team.

We spent more time on Skye and Torridon in 2007 than any other year so check out these pages for the heads up on our new three and five day guided trips to some of the most spectacular mountain scenery in Europe: Ridge Walking, Torridon Munros, Skye, Sky Munros, Skye Scrambles.

Lastly, while go further tailors most of its guiding to suit individuals and small groups, we've decided to schedule in a few organised three and five day trips in Torridon, Skye and the Fisherfield wilderness. More on those soon....

Tags: murdo, skye, torridon, fisherfield