Three days of hardcore at Steall crag

By the end of today I was physically unable to push a wire brush forwards across a piece of rock. Steall Crag is one of those weird overhanging crags of extremes of wet/dryness. Most of it is perma dry, but the rest is very often wet. Luckily, the wet bits are only limited to the top and the odd wee seep here and there, but those bits get manky.

This place, like The Anvil and Dumbarton are all what I call ultimate hardcore venues. Most of the routes are sick hard or remain unclimbed due to being that extra bit sick hard. There are few easy routes, but they also seem to manage to be sick hard. That is why I like them. There are a bunch of 8a/b routes there and some futuristic projects.

Michael Tweedley was our first visitor at chez MacLeod to come up for a bit of lochaber climbing action. I am glad he brought with him three days of no rain to follow the 21 days of rain that preceded. While he worked hard on one of the 8as I cleaned some old and new routes. The bottom 20 metres of the routes were totally dry and clean but the last ten metres needed a lot of work to shift the super steely scottish moss. So now the routes are ready to be climbed if I am good enough (questionable).

But now I have to go back to sedentary work for a while, deadlines call... Not to worry, my shredded arms need the time away. On monday, the hardcore will begin again, if the rain does not.