DUMBARTON DAYS

Babsi Zangerl and Jacopo Larcher explore Scotland's trad testpieces.

This year, Black Diamond Athletes Barbara Zangerl and Jacopo Larcher traveled to the famed crag of Dumbarton, home to a collection of iconic and extremely heady trad climbs in Scotland. They overcame whippers, weather, struggles and found success.

Video: Riky Felderer

All images: Riky Felderer

It was Jacopo’s idea to finally make the trip happen. Having taken a long break from climbing on gear, it was time for some trad climbing again. His dream was to try Rhapsody—a route infamous for one of the biggest whippers you can take in Scotland (and, it should be mentioned, not on the biggest gear). I was not really sure what was on my agenda for this trip. Of course, I wanted to try this route a bit on top rope, just to find out what it's like to climb on such an iconic trad testpiece. I knew if I could not make real progress on this one, there would be some other interesting trad lines around that I could have some fun on.

I was stoked to check out a new place, a new country, and most importantly, to get to see the Scottish Highlands. Somewhere in the back of my mind there was the movie Braveheart and the image of Mel Gibson fighting in one of the most beautiful landscapes imaginable. But soon I learned that most of the footage of this film had been shot in Ireland. Apart from this disappointing discovery, the Scottish Highlands are for sure worth seeing and worth the long car drive through the incredible landscape (although you really need good weather to actually see anything).

The first week of our trip was a test of patience, and it took all of my motivation just to get out and climb. Six degrees Celsius is not really a problem on its own, but the stormy winds made it feel well below freezing. I was wrapped in two big down jackets and it was really hard to find the motivation to take them off for climbing. I kept asking myself, “What am I doing here?” By the end of the week I was convinced that this was not fun. I needed either a project that I was mega-stoked on, or long days with fun climbing on different routes. I had neither one in that moment, and the temperatures were way out of my comfort zone. We tried to stay motivated and kept on doing things like climbing on top rope, hanging out at the coffee shop and driving back for another session, warming up in the car, belaying while it was snowing, etc.

Still we saw some Scottish climbers walking around with T-shirts and I thought, “This is it! These are the great conditions! Maybe the people here are a little harder compared to the softies in Austria and Italy?” I felt relief when a local climber told us the weather was not normal for the time of the year.

After the first week, it got much warmer and the wind calmed down. One down jacket was enough, and the motivation was higher than ever. Jacopo made some really good progress on Rhapsody, but I had a hard time on the first difficult section of the upper wall. I searched for hours to find a good solution and some footholds to figure out how to climb the reachy moves. I finally found a solution, but it still felt too hard to connect the sequences in the crux. So I didn’t spend much time considering leading Rhapsody. I wanted to climb the logical exit of this wall named Requiem (E8 6b), which is for sure one of the must-do routes at Dumby. I had some scary moments on the last hard move, putting my trust in one really small Camalot. But overall it is a quite safe climb.

While Jacopo made his first lead attempts onRhapsody, I started to check out another Dave MacLeod classic calledAchemine (E9 6c). The route starts by following the well-knownChemin de Fer (E5), the biggest crack at Dumby and a really classic line. Where the crack turns off to the right,Acheminegoes straight up through the headwall on face holds. It is also in the crack that you can place the last piece of gear before you start a really long runout to the top. I had to search for holds and do some brushing, and it didn’t seem as if anybody had tried the route recently. It took some time to figure out how to do the hard boulder problem part and then it still felt quite hard to connect the single moves. I took two big whippers before I could get through the crux for the redpoint. In the last meters I really had to keep it all together and stay calm. It is not really hard there but it’s also not an option to fall when you’re about 13 meters above the last cam.

The definite highlight of our trip though was Jacopo’s send of Rhapsody! He invested a lot of energy and had some close tries before he finally sent the route. With the big goal of the trip ticked off, we had time to check out some other places, such as Tunnel Wall in the Highlands, and The Cobbler in the Arrochar Alps. We went there for one special route called Dalriada (E7 6b). This place has quite a long approach, about two hours. But the view there and the crazy arête are absolutely worthwhile. A really gorgeous place to be in the best weather we could imagine.

After some more sightseeing, we decided to do a little cleaning up at Dumbarton Rock. Before we arrived at Dumbarton we heard some rumors that it is not the cleanest or most beautiful place to go on a climbing trip. When we stopped the first time in the parking lot, we quickly understood why. The place seemed to be the local party spot for the town of Dumbarton. There is a lot of garbage everywhere, so there was definitely some work to do. We know that the local climbers are trying hard to keep this place clean and we wanted to contribute as well.

Compared to most of the climbing crags around our home, the Scottish make use of every piece of rock they can find. Everything that slightly resembles stone gets developed. There are a lot of variations and combinations of routes and it is not always the best and most solid rock. But the approach to climb on natural protection when possible is really exemplary—a pure style where you have to keep it all together to actually climb a route. On nearly all of the routes at Dumby, you don’t risk a ground fall, but of course you can hurt yourself if you take a bad uncontrolled whipper. Sometimes you have to invest a little bit more and the challenge may be bigger, but in the end you feel much happier having achieved something where you had to overcome fear in addition to the climbing. This is what makes such climbs so satisfying and memorable.

-Babsi Zangerl