Torridon Bouldering Guide

Welcome to the Jumble

By Ian Taylor and Richie Betts

The Torridon Bouldering Guide is a definitive manual to Scotland's finest highland bouldering destination.

Lovingly produced by the area's main activists, Ian Taylor and Richie Betts, the  Torridon Bouldering guide describes about 250 problems, and with it being Torridon, the guide will be useful for finding the many remaining first ascents as well as established problems. Get the book, get up there and enjoy the friction.

Torridon, along with Dumbarton is one of Scotland’s great bouldering destinations, and for many the finest. Fittingly the North West’s best bouldering occurs amongst much of its finest scenery. It is difficult to appreciate the sheer scale of the place and the myriad possibilities for new discoveries at all grades. Endless terraces of perfect sandstone spill down from Liathach’s summit ridges, drawing the eye ever upwards towards a distant vanishing point, where perspective is lost in a shimmering kaleidoscope of stone. Torridon can never be subjected to the strip-mining of development other areas have suffered; it is simply too big. As well as being an obstacle to a definitive guide, its complexity is one of its attractions. Spotted a perfect sunlit arete from the road? Take a wander up the hillside and become lost in a labyrinth of other sun-kissed aretes, walls and slabs.

Each area has its own character; each season brings different colours and textures to the rock. Autumnal reds and golds, purpled stone and dying bracken. The stark beauty of mid-winter with its bitter east wind and snow flurries. The regeneration of spring, jubilant bird-song and the rustling of unseen creatures emerging from hibernation, before the summer midges reclaim their territory.