Discovering Dunlichity

DISCOVERING DUNLICHITY

By Benjy Wilcock

Rob Thomas sizing up the Fight Club bloc

Rob Thomas working new problems at Dunlichity

Discovering Dunlichity by Benjy Wilcock On an unseasonably warm day in February 2021, led on by teaser photos of blocs hiding in the woods from Stu Goodwin, Rob Thomas and I decided to head in for a look with a few steelies in search of these forgotten blocs. A hand drawn topo from the G2 crew showed the start of the bouldering here, offering six lines on the blocs immediately below the sport crag called “1-6” which were given Brit tech grades.

These are all in the f4s and f5s and worth warming up on.

As is often the case with such a dominant crag as Dunlichity, bouldering here had always been an afterthought from visiting sport climbers, and few had gone further in search past these blocs below the crag or with bouldering in mind.

The first bloc we looked at was what we called ‘Fight Club Bloc’, named for its sharp nature that will insist you tape up and also because, up until then, anyone who’d ever been to Dunlichity bouldering never spoke about Dunlichity!

I cleaned up an obvious line on the right-hand side called Marla which goes at about f7A+ whilst Rob cleaned the arêtes, left and right. The right arête is a good 6a warm up (Bob Paulson’s Arête), whilst Marla is a powerful, fingery line with very board style climbing to a rising lip. The left arête lay dormant for a while . . . more in a bit.

A few months passed before we decided to bash back in through the bracken and look at the aforementioned ‘G2 blocs’. There are two boulders on top of one another, one is an enormous bloc which has three lines whilst the lower bloc has the other three. The potential immediately jumped out, ‘G2 high’ had an obvious highball east face whilst ‘G2 low’ has a huge gently leaning overhang over a large pit, perfect for a stamina session. We repeated most of the established lines and then got to work filling in the gaps.

Benjy cleaning what was to become Grave of the 50

Discovering Dunlichity

There are now 10 new lines on G2 low up to 7a+. As ever grades approximated by how the felt on the day with cleaning and aren’t set in stone. The hardest line on this is probably Are you Dunlickingme? which does a full left-right traverse of the face with some big moves on good holds before finishing up the brilliant 6c original Dunlickingme, which involves a crucial gaston for the left hand. There are a lot of link ups and variations on this boulder with Rob adding more traverses and straight ups in early October 2021.

The highball east face of G2 high was the next obvious goal, but the rock was and still is flakey and friable. We didn’t even know where the line would go up it yet and the 4m ladder hardly got me up to what looked like the crux on the first round of cleaning on the first visit. Returning with a rope Rob dropped in over the lip and the line became immediately apparent, left of where we had anticipated and right over a boulder that wouldn’t move. The line follows a shallow scoop and crack to the top. After some serious scrubbing of holds and some working out on the top rope we realised it would be a little spicey even if not that hard. Rob broke off a foot hold on a top rope go which gave us both apprehension about taking the rope off. With another quick scrub and chalk to get the last loose crystals and crozzles, and then some stone moving and bracken padding to get the landing levelled, it was time to have a go.

I jumped on and started climbing, before I knew it, I was standing on top. The line had gone, and at a reasonable grade of 5+ though the final moves involve a trusting reach for the lip before a quick mantle, which is just not droppable due to the horrid landing. It was so good I went around a second time and then Rob quickly repeated it first try from the ground. This is one of those lines where the climbing and positions are so good, grades or difficulty become meaningless. The line had a name before we’d cleaned it which is The Grave of The Fifty named after the Gaelic and a supposed mass grave of fifty Dunlichity cattle thieves who

Rob Thomas opening new problems at Dunlichity

Discovering Dunlichity

were revenged by Nairnshire farmers who had followed them.

The latest problems have been found on the left arête of the Fight Club Bloc. The amazing leaning arête has a sharp but good hold low down before around 1.5m of blank rock spare a useless crozzle. Rob realised fairly quickly whilst cleaning this in February that it was a dyno but I was still convinced the crozzle might be useful. We went for a session in early October and after a lot of flying about, static attempts, going with the wrong hand and generally getting scared about jumping, I eventually worked out the flight trajectory and got what has to be the only true dyno in the Strath. The stand from the sharp hold is Tyler Durden but the full arête can be climbed from a sit working up through some easy moves to the stand start hold before dynoing to the lip (about 7b).

Like all dynos, the grade is hard to determine. However this settles, it’s a great move and the grade is secondary to the climbing.

Dunlichty has a lot more to offer and there are plenty more lines to develop if you have the energy and time to scrub. It’s only about a 10 minute walk in and has some good landings and a nice atmosphere. The venue will feature in the new Strathnairn Bouldering Guide, by Stone Country Press 2022, and more can be found on the Strathnairn page at https:// www.boulderscotland.info/ Videos of classic problems can be viewed here: Marla: https://vimeo.com/514998881 Dunlichity G2: https://vimeo.com/559708942 Dunlichity G2: https://vimeo.com/557653916 Graves of the Fifty: https://vimeo.com/596829450 Tyler Durden/The Narrator: https://vimeo.com/625642195