Glen Pean
by Dave MacLeod
Doing my first new route changed my life. Before that, I looked in guidebooks to direct my climbing. After that I just went running in the mountains and looked for new possibilities. It did open my eyes to trying things that I wouldn’t otherwise have taken on. It also made me look at life differently.
From my new routing I developed a habit of looking for gaps in my knowledge, and found it easier to deal with uncertainty in general.
One thing I always wondered was if I’d ever feel like I’d gone past that magical feeling when you just start out exploring the mountains, when you don’t yet know whats out there. But after 25 years of climbing, it feels like the opposite. The more places I explore, the more I have a sense of abundance, of more places and climbs and projects that I’ll ever fit into my life.
Glen Pean is only about 25 miles from my house. There are thousands of new routes to climb there, and I’ll never get through them all. I walk around that place and I just feel like I’m going to wake up from a dream, it’s just brilliant.