Summer of Progress

A quick note on progress this summer….

The really big news I guess was getting a publisher (Vertebrate) on board.  Despite everyone’s hard work over the past couple of years, this is the step that will ultimately turn our ideas into reality.  It’s given us a major motivational boost and re-energised the whole process.

We’ve now got about 80-90% of the text at least in draft, with the remainder in progress – I’m confident we’ll get a full draft by the end of this month (come on people!).  The last couple of month’s have also seen a couple of new and in my view important written contributors coming on board.  The likes of Mark McGowan and Grant Farquar are names synonymous with hard adventure climbing in Scotland over the last three decades – we are totally psyched to get them involved.  Mark has given us his tale of soloing Slime Wall’s “Shibboleth” (a hard E2) back in the day, which will give a particularly exciting historical dimension to that section of the book.

And despite an awful summer for getting out climbing in the hills we’ve made some great progress will photos, including superb shots of Beinn Eighe and of the crags out on Arran.  We’ve also secured support in principle from a number of very talented photographers (including Dave Cuthbertson) to provide access to some of their previous work.

So all in all things are going extremely well; we are aiming for completion by the end of next summer.  That could mean a book on the shelves in time for next Christmas, an exciting thought after all this time and effort. 

Fingers crossed for a good winter…