UKC

Guy Robertson and Adam Russell have made the first repeat of The Wailing Wall IX,9 on An Teallach - Bidein a' Ghlas Thuill. The line was established in December 2010 by the late Martin Moran with Murdoch Jamieson.

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Blimey almost makes me want to do some winter climbing!! Great stuff.

Lovely tribute to Martin Moran.

Inspiring stuff.

What is the reason for there being no summer lines on this cliff?

Si.

That kind of sandstone doesn't lend itself well to rock routes really. It's blocky, loose, wet, vegetated, dirty etc. 

The rock routes in that part of Scotland tend to be on Quartzite. You won't find many rock routes on the Torridonian giants.  

It also doesn't see a lot of sunlight, it's in a very recessed position. 

I'm trying to get my head round how you do a deep lockoff on a poor torque!? :-0 Or indeed how you do any lockoff on any torque! All the forces seem to be going in the wrong directions!

Body tension?

Yeah - that was my best guess but loads and load of it! I suppose it doesn't IX,9 for no reason... Those fellas are strong.

Hamish's photos are fantastic, but I also feel having a separate team on an ab rope is a pretty new thing isn't it? It makes for wonderful images for the rest of us to enjoy, but I suppose shows that the market is getting ever bigger in order to make such things economically viable to do. 

His photos are in general good, would beg to differ on this one though, rotated 90 degrees for effect!, this is annoying and quite common, is anything real anymore. 

Cheers for the kind words about the photos. Just to clarify, most of the time when I’m going out to photograph these hard climbs I’m not being commissioned to at all. Yes, there is sometimes scope to sell images to sponsors/brands/magazines etc afterwards, but it’s in no way guaranteed.

On these occasions I’m mostly just going out because I enjoy the process of photographing these sort of climbs, and it makes for a fun day out in the hills without any stress/pressure of having to come away with good images for a client. There’s also the chance that the images might come in useful for future books (as with Guy’s recent Sea Cliffs book).

The image works both ways. That cliff is pretty much vertical anyway so rotating the image 90 degrees isn't exactly distorting reality. Thank your lucky stars I didn't rotate it 180 degrees

I'd go for the full 360, that would really melt people's heads.  

They are beautiful photos Hamish - I've followed you on instagram for some time so seen lots of your climbing and skiing photos.

My comment was thinking back to the 90s when I was in Scotland, and I guess even into the 2000s it was very rare to see photos of Scottish winter climbing that weren't bum shots looking up, or top of helmet shots looking down. A photographer separate to a climbing team just makes for so much more dramatic photos on the whole I reckon. I'm really glad that you are able to make a living (half a living perhaps!) out of selling uncommissioned photos, or getting commissions from manufacturers and so on. I know you climb yourself so I guess if it was just a weekend hobby thing, like the rest of us you'd probably be more focused on doing a route or skiing a line yourself than watching others do it and taking pictures, and us armchair (or office chair) climbers and skiers would not have the inspiration that your shots give!

For anyone else - you can admire loads more of Hamish's work at https://www.hamishfrost.com/ or on instagram!

There are actually lots of really great rock routes on Torridonian sandstone - the Applecross crags, Stac Pollaidh, Quinag, Suilven; it really depends on the cliff. An Teallach sandstone is some of the dirtiest about, although on this crag specifically it's not especially loose (compared to, say, Beinn Bhan....).

Nice article, though I felt given the reflective nature of the writing it might have been nice to have included some input from Murdoch too.