To many visitors, Dumbarton fails to inspire, but some climbers love it. Although tiny, Dumbarton and nearby Dumbuck pack in about 70 routes, both sport and trad, and more than 150 boulder problems. As a youth, MacLeod was smitten by the overhanging shield of the main headwall and the enormous, graffiti-covered blocks jumbled at its base. He would ride the bus or train for 30 minutes and then walk. Until he got climbing shoes for his 15th birthday, MacLeod bouldered in his sneakers. He fell in love with the technical moves and complex sequences exacted by the basaltic rock — the “precise and perfect” movement of Dumbarton bouldering, which taught him “technical cleverness.” It was all small, square-cut edges and open-handed pinches and blocks, requiring massive body tension and bizarre foot sequences. He spent so much time here — usually alone — that he earned the nickname “Dumby Dave.”

“It was a really good place to learn, because the norm for my climbing was that everything felt really hard — I had to try really hard,” he says.

By age 18, MacLeod no longer lacked climbing partners and had repeated many of Scotland’s and the English Peak District’s hardest climbs, up to V9 and 5.13. He had added a few routes of his own to the short, fierce walls of Dumbarton. Yet the Scot always kept one eye on the soaring crack that splits Dumbarton’s headwall: Requiem (E8 6b, or trad-gear 5.13c), put up by Dave “Cubby” Cuthbertson in 1983. At the time of its FA, this 115-foot finger and hand crack may have been the hardest route in the world. When MacLeod redpointed Requiem in 2000, the first time anyone had placed all the gear on the lead, he was left with a quandary: what next? Dumby Dave had ticked everything at his home crag.

Anyone else might have moved on to greener pastures, but MacLeod’s persistence is legendary. Some might call it obsession.

As a kid, MacLeod was nearly thrown out of school several times for skipping classes. “I was interested in the subjects and wanted to learn, but the environment was a complete waste of time,” he says. He instead poured his intense focus into other activities: before he started climbing, Mac-Leod loved making model planes, though he quickly tired of simple plastic kits and started building his own planes out of wood, with functioning controls. MacLeod also dabbled in sculpture, attracted by the notion of form. However, once he discovered Dumbarton, his focus shifted to unlocking lithic puzzles. “I remember staring at problems for hours, trying to work out how to climb them,” he says. Dumbarton may have seemed climbed out to most, but they just hadn’t studied it like MacLeod had.

“The next challenge was not hard to find,” MacLeod later wrote in an article. “The obvious step forward was to leave behind the safety of one of [the] crack lines and take on one of the great sheets of smooth wall in between.”

Chemin de Fer, another Cubby climb, took an E5 6a crack (roughly 5.12a) up the left side of Dumbarton’s rearing, diamond-shaped headwall. Where Chemin de Fer bent left after 120 feet, MacLeod determined to forge up and right for 40 unprotected feet. The result, in 2001, was Achemine (E9 6c, or runout 5.13d). He took the massive lob from the route 11 times before succeeding. It was the first E9 in Scotland.