Local Hero
Last winter, MacLeod traveled to Spain and redpointed L’Odi Social (5.14c), which convinced him that Rhapsody had world-class technical difficulty to match its daunting runouts. Sonnie Trotter visited Dumbarton twice last spring and made good progress on toprope before rain drove him away. He blogged that Rhapsody was “a magnificent route, hard, bold, and beautiful. I saw the video they made last year, and [Dave] makes the crux look like piss, when in reality it’s nasty hard, brick hard.” Trotter said he’d be back.

Rhapsody brought MacLeod worldwide fame and some measure of financial success. His sponsorships have improved, and he has a busy lecturing and writing schedule. He holds a degree in sport science, which has helped him build a steady coaching business. MacLeod often works late into the night, writing articles, working on training plans for clients, and maintaining three separate websites. Yet all this success hasn’t tempted him to move closer to climbing’s mainstream. Rather, the opposite. In June, he and Claire bought a tiny house outside Fort William, at the base of Ben Nevis, in the soggy, buggy western Highlands. As soon as they set up house, it rained for three weeks.

Digging deeper into the Scottish hills in search of unlikely gold, MacLeod is moving ever closer to completing a world-class route in each of his four disciplines. He’s already done it on traditional winter and rock routes. And, before he moved, he came very close to completing one of his last great bouldering projects at Dumbarton: a link of the 30-move roof traverse of Perfect Crime (V12) into Sanction, a V13 he established earlier this year. This winter, he’ll be commuting back to finish it off. V12 endurance into V13 power — world class.

Last spring, MacLeod climbed Metalcore, Scotland’s first sport 5.14c, and soon eclipsed it with another new route that had nearly been climbed way back in 1992 by his old mentor, Cuthbertson, the man who first climbed Requiem. The 80-foot route, Ring of Steall, is right in MacLeod’s backyard of Glen Nevis; after 10 years of poking around on it, MacLeod redpointed the climb in early August, calling it 5.14c. Malcolm Smith reportedly thinks 5.14d.

With sport climbing and bouldering on the table, has MacLeod put “death routes” on the back shelf? In June, he abandoned an attempt on the Indian Face (E9 6c), the world-famous headpoint route in Wales. Claire said he’d been psyching up for Indian Face for six months. MacLeod quickly toproped the route without falls and felt certain he could lead it, but then he walked away, saying he just wasn’t inspired. Were his big balls still intact? Did abandoning Indian Face mean that his days of bold climbing might be over?  

“Not at all — it was the opposite actually,” he said. “I think if I had felt in my gut that ‘I’m not really enjoying the climbing on the route, but I’m going to do it anyway,’ then I wouldn’t really be in control.” He says that caving into expectations of what he should do or of simply ticking “important” routes goes against his mojo of climbing best on lines that inspire him.

In August, inspired by a wandering line of deadpoints and crimpers on overhanging granite, MacLeod pulled off “the most dangerous lead I’ve ever done,” the 115-foot To Hell and Back (E10 6c, or 5.13c X), at Hell’s Lum, in Scotland. But of all the inspirational climbs in Scotland, the ultimate may be an unclimbed rock line on Ben Nevis, the epicenter of British mountaineering.

This mega-project takes on a 225-foot, square-cut arête on a massive volcanic buttress, beginning with about 50 feet of unprotected, overhanging 5.13. At a small roof, Dumby Dave will build a nest of pro for the crux: 30 feet of fingery 5.14c. Then comes a shakeout on good edges, where he’ll place a “pretend runner” — a skyhook — and go for crux two: 5.13c on more little edges. “If you fall here, you’re basically going 20 to 25 meters to the ground,” he says. Above, the route eases to E6 (solid 5.12), but it’s still a long way to the top. MacLeod has explored the line on toprope about 10 times and has done all the moves, but he is “still absolutely nowhere near linking big sections.” The route is E11 in the making — maybe harder — and it’s high on Britain’s highest mountain.

Who knows how long the Ben Nevis super-route might take him? The Scottish weather — bad enough at Dumbarton — is exponentially worse several thousand feet up the Ben. The rock-climbing season lasts only 10 weeks. To do this climb, MacLeod would have to be in peak form and have recently dialed the moves, and then he’d have to catch a spell of dry, warm weather.

“At the moment, I can’t imagine climbing it,” MacLeod says. “But I imagine someone will climb it someday, and I know I’ll give it a bloody good shot.” 

Although Senior Contributing Editor (and Climbing Online Editor) Dougald MacDonald has visited Scotland five times, he’s completed only one rock climb.