UKC

Finally Dave Mac has climbed one of the last remaining projects at dumbuck quarry. See full story
http://www.scottishclimbs.com/newspage.php?newsid=174

In reply to Alasdair Fulton:

They must be having better weather up there than we are down here! Good effort

In reply to Alasdair Fulton:

Excellent. Only another seven full grades for me to go then.........

Quality effort Dave.
I raise my can of Export to ya!

In reply to Alasdair Fulton:

Not knowing anything at all about sports climbing in Scotland (or anywhere else to be honest), what is the view on the grade ? is it Fr8c in the same way a Scottish VS is VS or is it totally equivalent to 8c in Spain or France ?

In reply to GrahamD:

Apart from the odd route in the newest SMC guides where the grade is actually given as "Scottish VS", there should be little difference between a VS in Scotland and a VS anywhere else. Though personally, I think grit VS's are hard and Scottish VS's are easy, so what do I know?!?

Dave's climbed 8c in France, so I'd imagine he'll have graded his new route relative to that, plus others he's done in Scotland and elsewhere.

In reply to Stuart S:

Shame its not going to get any traffic from the Europeans regularly climbing this grade, though, for a wider concensus.

In reply to GrahamD:

Given that it sounds like Dave needed 3 years of working the route to find it in good enough nick to climb, I'd be surprised if it gets traffic from anyone other than other strong locals!

But Dave's been pretty active repeating the other hard sports climbs in Scotland and elsewhere, and if he reckons this is 8c then I doubt that'll be far from the mark.

In reply to Stuart S:

Scottish VS harks back to the time when the hardest grade in the guidebook was vs and there was a list at the back of the book of all the climbs in order of difficulty.

If you have a look in the old SMC Glencoe guide you'll see that Carnivore is the hardest VS in the guide followed by Shibboleth. When you see 'Scottish VS' in a guidebook it means that the route hasn't been repeated for years so the grade could be anywhere between about VS and E3.

In reply to Removed User:

Dear Eric

There was a graded list as well which helped with how hard they were.

Routes graded "Scottish VS" may not even been repeated. In the case of my "Scottish VS" routes, it is because they may be a load of choss.

Norrie

In reply to Removed User:

I was actually trying to explain to the OP that there is no such thing as "Scottish VS" any more (other than these oddities in the current SMC guides) and that just because, once upon a time, Scottish VS could mean anything from VS to E3, it doesn't necessarily follow that Dave's F8c is inaccurately graded.

And Norrie, what do you mean by suggesting that there are anything other than three star classics in Scotland?!?