Our Month: Mountaineering Scotland in July 2024

Access

Climbing matters have been an area to look into this month. Newtyle Quarry, near Dunkeld, was a mothballed quarry and popular venue until around 2019 when quarrying started again, and access rights were suspended –active quarries are not included in access rights. With the A9 dualling and the Cross Tay Link Road nearing completion, the demand for aggregates produced by the quarry is much reduced. Perth and Kinross Council as the planning authority were approached to ask when climbing could resume. There is still a low level of extraction taking place and restoration and landscaping hasn’t been agreed yet, so best keep that dry tooling kit in the cupboard, still.

Dumbarton Rock is a well-known climbing venue, but recently a member was told go away by a Castle employee as climbing was not permitted there - it is an Ancient Monument. West Dunbartonshire Council are the Access Authority here, charged with upholding access rights and responsibilities, but unfortunately an enquiry to them about this situation produced no helpful response. They couldn’t advise on legal aspects of climbing on historic monuments as they have no Access Officer at the moment to assist with this kind of situation. 

Historic Environment Scotland, to their credit, responded swiftly acknowledging that Dumbarton Rock is an important destination for climbing and that it can be done in accordance with the Scottish Outdoor Access Code, although climbing into the Castle itself is not permitted nor fixing belays off the railings or castle masonry. The Rock Management Plan of 2013 will be shared with relevant groups to ensure clarity on what is permissible.

This highlights the importance of Local Council making sure that they fund an Access Officer or Countryside Ranger who understands the law and guidance and can advise on rights and responsibilities.

Environment

The Shared Rural Network continues to be a focus of attention, to limit the spread of 4G digital telecoms masts and direct them to where they are most needed, by rural communities and businesses and fill gaps along the road network. 

Current planning proposals can be seen on a new webpage we have created, with an easy-to-use map. You can send any comments you have on them to the relevant local Council dealing with them: 

At a wider scale, SRN have shared with us their list of all 260 potential mast locations, and we are currently looking at them to assess their potential impact against our mountaineering interests.  We have devised ‘traffic light’ criteria to help with this, marking them ‘red’ where there is likely to be an impact where we would object, and others that may ‘green’ where they may be beneficial, and ‘amber’ where the impact is uncertain.  This is intended to assist SRN target where the telecoms masts may be less controversial and be of public benefit, and to hold back on the ones that service no-one.

For most of the ClimbScotland team, July provides the chance to take a breath and enjoy some well-deserved annual with family and friends after busy first half of 2024.  

On a sad note, the Team said farewell and good luck to Calum McBain who is moving on after seven years as a key part of the ClimbScotland team. Those who know Calum through his role with us, I’m sure will agree when we say he’ll be greatly missed and will join us in thanking Calum for all his hard work in supporting and developing climbing in Scotland.

Throughout the year, we run our Scottish Squads program of high level coaching opportunities for both our Scottish Squads, as well as an ED&I program supporting our partners like Urban Uprising and Common wheel. As part of these we offer coach training session with our Fundamentals of Climbing workshops. Following on from a Fundas1 earlier in the year, July saw a Fundas 2 being attended by the Scottish Development Squad, and Urban Uprising and Common Wheel volunteers.

The qualification for the ClimbScotland Fun Boulder Comp, sponsored by NICAS, came to a close with an amazing 275 young climbers taking part. This consisted of 141 Girls and 134 Boys. The finals will be taking place at Block 10 in Dundee on Saturday 10^th August and invites have been sent to those who qualified for the finals.

The ClimbScotland team are looking forward to an exciting finals!

Bookings for the Youth Climbing Series opened this month, more information on this can be found on our website.

With staff taking holidays this month, the team have done a great job keeping things ticking over in the Perth office and making sure there is always someone there to answer members’ enquiries on the phone and by  email.

Bookings for our autumn Night Navigation courses are now open, offering members an opportunity to hone their navigation skills in low visibility – a must for the Scottish hills!

The annual report for our financial year 2023-24 has now been completed, and will be available online with the next issue of our digital-only publication Mountain Matters which will arrive in your inbox in mid-August.

With membership growing, we are looking for a volunteer to support the team in the office on a weekly basis with some of the routine admin tasks including packing and mailing welcome packs and online shop orders. You can find more details on our website if you are interested, or you know someone else that might be.

The Mountaineering Scotland social media channels have been busier than ever, with a new series of Top Tip videos from our Mountain Safety Team getting good engagement on Facebook, Instagram and our new TikTok channel! We are hopeful that TikTok will allow us to reach a totally different audience, and will be focussing on using it to share safety tips and information. We’ve also had two great mountain skills blog pieces out this month covering what to take in your first aid kit this summer by Senior Mountain Safety Adviser Ross Cadie, and part one of a series on navigation skills for mountain runners by Ian Stewart from Trail Running Scotland.

And finally, this month we also launched our first digital-only membership for young people aged 18-25. We know that this age group has been hit particularly hard by the cost of living crisis and hope this low cost, digital membership will enable young adults to take their first step as members of Mountaineering Scotland and allow them to develop the essential skills and knowledge that will last them a life time in the hills!

July was a quite month for courses delivered by the Mountain Safety Team.  Three one-day navigation courses delivered over a long weekend in the Pentland hills.  This course is popular with those wanting to travel by public transport due to its proximity to transport links (along with Arrochar).

The closing date for the Mountain Safety Advisor role to replace Ben Gibson has now closed and we are very fortunate to have received several very good applications. Thank you to everyone who took the time to apply, and we hope to have an announcement in August.