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Back to Albarracin
The night that we arrived back from Cuenca, we were so tired from the whole week that we went to bed at 9 o’clock! The next morning we were psyched to be pulling back on real rock again after the hot, sweaty comp had robbed us of valuable skin. Now we have an extra crash pad the loss of skin seems worth it. Before we went to Cuenca I tried a route called Inashakra font7c. It had been raining and the top out was wet so I used another rock to top out. Unsure whether I had actually done it right or not we went back to check and also for Simon to have a go. It was now clear to see from the chalk that I had “cheated” as you can top out on slopers, which meant I had to do it all again. Getting frustrated as I couldn’t repeat the first move I finally got the top. I also tried the font7b+ next to it but had to return the next day to complete it as I was too tired from trying Inashakra. On the way back to the van, we stopped at one last boulder, another font7b+ with a hard rounded top out. Having done all the moves and only the top out to complete, I tried for my last time that day. Unfortunately and quite scarily I pulled on and felt a sharp pain in my shoulder. I stopped straight away but had a worrying feeling I had just picked up an injury.
The next day we went back to yet another unfinished project, a font7c called Circo Del Sol. When we previously tried it we ended up lifting each other up to try the top moves as the top bit was yet again really hard. Now armed with beta, within about an hour, Simon pulled over the top shortly followed by myself. Thankfully my shoulder pain the day before was just a twinge. Happy with this tick I had one more project in the Sol Area. The line is called Revenge but since the rock is sometimes poor quality, a crimp had become more positive. The climb was originally given font8a but now I have done it, it feels more like font7b+. Simon saving his skin didn’t try it and wasn’t climbing for the rest of the day and so we headed back of to the van for dinner. That night everything went a bit crazy. Loads of Spanish people turned up in Parking. Loads and loads and loads of vans appeared. It was a Thursday night! It turned out that it was Fathers Day on Friday and so the whole of Spain got the day off! So Friday turned out to be crammed with people. I wanted a rest day but went to try an font8a overhanging prow anyway. I only spent about half an hour climbing as it had a ridiculously massive move in the middle which for someone my height just seemed impossible.
Fully rested I set off on my own to an area called Techos while Simon stayed and ate breakfast. My aim was to work out the top out of a font7c roof which was horrendously crimpy. I tried and tried and tried but not matter what I did differently it still spat me off. I spent the day being shut down by various problems, so it was nice when we had an evening session and I finally got up some problems!
Still with a lot of loud Spaniards in Parking we headed out early back to sol. With no-one around finally we had peace. We warmed and quickly dispatched a font7a+ and an amazing rising font7b traverse. When we came last year everything had snow on so we couldn’t finish any of the boulders. There was a font7b traverse that we tried but we weren’t fit enough so this year we went to see if we could do it. The holds are really slopey, the climb is quite long and has poor holds at the end just when you’re tired. I did it on my second go. Pleased with this I called it a day and just at the right time as it started to rain. Thankfully all the Spaniards had left presumably to go back to their jobs. The Parking was back to being ours.
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Comp in Cuenca
The journey to Cuenca was not as quick as we thought it might be, it took about 2.5 hours on the windiest, roughest roads I’ve seen in a long time. When we got to Cuenca we had a cheeky cheeseburger starter at McDonalds and then headed to the wall. We got there a little bit early because they don’t open until 17:00 in the afternoons. When Rodrigo turned up he met us in his usual supremely enthusiastic way and said we were welcome to climb for free while we here. We had a good session at the little wall and Rodrigo invited us to his house for the evening. We met his sister, girlfriend and his sister’s boyfriend and had an intensive Spanish lesson for about 3 hours. This was our first experience of the crazy times that the Spanish do things, for example they cooked dinner at about 00:30 and said that this was normal and we ended up going to bed at about 03:00am madness!
Unsurprisingly we were pretty tired when we got up but we went to climb at the wall anyway which is where we met Rodrigo’s business partner Scott a kiwi who moved to Spain a few years ago and never left. He invited us to stay at his house which was awesome because it meant warm showers and a bed in a room that wasn’t freezing cold.
When we went back to his house we met his wife Christina who is lovely as well and the two of them invited us out to a bar in town that gives free food with every beer! Apparently that is how Tapas used to be but the tradition was lost in most of Spain and the only places it has stayed is Castilla-La-Mancha and Granada so we made the most of it. The food was ridiculous! With each beer you get a small cup of chicken and ham soup and a plate with quails eggs, jamon, bread, honeyed courgette and a big salad all for free, genius.
On the way back from the bar they offered us a bed for the whole week so we’ve stayed here everyday and they even gave us a key so we could come and go as we liked (you know you’re in good hands when you meet fellow climbers). Living here has really given us a good idea of the life of a Spaniard, they never sleep, they are lazy hell and they openly admit it. They have a slow but very good quality of life here and we can only imagine how much slower (and better) it is when the summer kicks in and it’s too hot to actually do anything.
Two days ago we climbed on some routes here and were pretty amazed at what we found. The rock is pretty poor quality and all the routes are held together with large amounts of cement and glue. In some places where there’s blank sections of rock they’ve drilled pockets and chipped crimps into the walls to make the climbs possible then on top of the drilled pockets and crimps they finish off the edges with more cement to make it a nice smooth hold. Can you imagine that on Stanage! We weren’t too fond of the falseness of it all so lost interest in the routes pretty quickly, there is a hell of a lot of rock here but it’s just not very high quality. Friday and today were rest days so we would be in shape for the competition on Sunday and hopefully I could grow back some skin by then and wear a bit less tape to hold ourselves together. Lucky for us we were informed of Neusc and given some by Rodrigo at the wall. It’s a bit like climb-on balm but not so natural and hippy so in theory it should work a bit better (like the rest of modern medicine). After two days of using it my finger has started to close up already which is awesome.
We just got back from the wall having met Pavi and his mates from Madrid who look like an annoyingly strong bunch and the problems are looking awesome, particularly with the inclusion of the blue volume from Holdz in Sheffield. Hopefully the comp will be a good day with the lots of Spanish craziness and some winning for at least one Brit.
It’s the morning after the comp and we did pretty well. Simon came third behind Pavi and a local Cuenca climber in the final and I won the final. That’s a first and third at a Spanish comp and new crash pad for the trip. We’re not sure where we are going to put it yet because we have no space and it’s massive but we’ll find a way. The day was really good with a decent turn out and we went for a beer afterwards (accompanied with more amazing free food) and got bombarded with Spanish for a while trying to pick up anything we could (not easy when you only know about five words). Once we had finished at the bar we went back to Scott’s where he cooked us Thai green curry (he’s a trained chef) which was much needed.
Today we are off back to the land of Albarracin and hopefully the weather will be like it is here, warm and sunny. We’ll be pretty disappointed if it’s naff again but we need a day or two rest after yesterday so it’s not so bad.
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Albarracin
200 miles down the road from Rodellar and we arrived in Albarracin at 12 o’clock at night. The drive wasn’t too bad but the roads were awesome. After not too long I was fast asleep and Simon pressed on.
After an interesting night sleep where the van nearly rolled down the hill at 3:00am leaving us jittery until the morning we made our plans to get some climbing done.
Man were we weak! Having not climbed for about a month at this point we had lost it completely, we were both weak and out of it mentally. After a day of frustrating shut downs we went back to the van and our skin seemed to have been unimpressed with the lay off as well and our tips were looking thin already. As I lay in bed with stinging fingers and no boulders ticked off I felt so pleased to have been climbing hard and was completely content for the first time in the trip.
A few days in we met a guy called Rodrigo while we were trying a 7c called “El Circo Del Sol” in sector Sol (naturally) who is from a town called Cuenca which is about 100 miles from Albarracin. He told us there was a competition in his wall on the 14th March and we couldn’t resist the temptation so planned to go there on the following Wednesday or Thursday for the Sunday competition.
After a few more days of climbing and some rest days we went to try Aeroline a 7c problem with a roof, slopers, a massive heel hook and a tiny little crimp and on Simons third go on his second session he sent it. He was really pleased and it was the first good tick of the trip and gave him the psyche for more. After that he got on “Frambuesa” a nasty 8a that ate his skin very quickly and by the time I decided to give up his forefinger on his right hand was super thin. We got some lunch and headed to “Arrastradero” a big and varied sector about 15 minutes walk from the van with loads to go at. We started with a 7b called “Space Cowboys” which had a hard finish that I managed to figure out. After the beta was found I sent it pretty quickly with the help of some uncharacteristic power screams. With the sneaky beta Simon got up it a few minutes later also accompanied by some screaming (it’s one of those problems) and we moved onto “Innashakra”. By this point Simon’s finger tip was through and looked like a little mouth so we drew some eyes on it to make a face but it didn’t help with the climbing.
Innashakra is hard! It’s hard at the start, hard in the middle and hard at the end. It took me at least half an hour to work it all out and then did it as it started to rain (we are sick of rain). Simon’s efforts were thwarted by an exploding little finger on his left hand and a skinless forefinger on his right hand. A bit of a shame for Simon to be out of action from lack of skin but it was a good day of climbing having done a 7c and a 7b each. At this point Simon’s skin was completely destroyed and he needed to rest to get some back so we went to sector Sol so I could try an 8a line on the Karmansia boulder. It looks like an awesome problem and it should go after a couple of sessions, I did all the moves but couldn’t string them together so watch this space (hopefully for a pair of ascents).
The week leading up to the comp soon turned out to be a complete wash out as it pounded it down with snow for two nights running leaving us surrounded by snow for the next few days. It didn’t seem like it was going to be melting anytime soon as it never got above freezing so we decided to go to Cuenca earlier than planned. Hopefully while we were there we could get some sport climbing done before the competition knowing that if the weather was rubbish we could always climb inside.
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Rodellar
The drive to Rodellar is a 400 mile epic which in the van is about 8/9 hours. We opted for the no toll roads route to save the cash which only adds a little time but adds a lot more interest to the drive and I’d recommend it to anyone driving from France into Spain. The highlight is that it includes a tunnel at 6000 feet which is straight down for 1.5km where the van broke the LDV Convoy land speed record of 84 mph in neutral! Fortunately the snow didn’t stop us in the mountains and we made it across the border at about 23:30 with about 2 hours to go. We arrived in Rodellar with an empty tank (literally and metaphorically) to find that there is no petrol station there and hoping that there is one fairly nearby.
Unfortunately the next day we were told that the nearest petrol station is 30km away. There was a possibility that we wouldn’t make it as the van was completely dry but after a nail biting journey we spluttered into the petrol station and filled her up to the brim. The weather was awesome and we were pretty pleased with ourselves for the decision to sack off the Gorge Du Tarn.
We got back to Rodellar, got our kit together and sin guide book we went off to find a route that looked doable and then check out the grades afterwards at the Refugio. We had a pretty good session but felt absolutely stamina-less and got shut down pretty hard. We gave the route 6c+ and fortunately for our egos it turned out to be 7b, it’s an awesome route and definitely one to get done someday.
The next day it rained and all climbing was rendered impossible, nightmare! We had just come from the coldest place in the world and this one was now the wettest. We got some shopping done at the supermarket which is about 45 minutes drive away and chilled out at the Refugio. The next day it rained and the next day it rained, the next day… it rained!
The Refugio (Kalandraka) is really cool and it has free Wifi all the time and free pool but there’s no amount of pool that can make the rubbish weather bearable. On the days when it didn’t rain the rock was still too wet to climb on from the day before and it wasn’t particularly warm either.
By the tenth day we decided to check the weather and if it wasn’t going to be getting any better we would high tail it out of Rodellar and get ourselves to Albarracin which is another 200 miles south and a bit more out of the mountains. The weather forecast said rain everyday for the foreseeable future and in Albarracin it was windy but dry. After an epic day breaking the water container and stripping clips (in the dark) from what was going to be our training route we said our goodbyes to the guys at the Refugio and left that evening.
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Sport Climbing in Sella, Spain
Late March I went on a sport climbing trip to Sella in Spain. I haven’t sport climbed properly for a couple of years so the trip was going to be quite interesting. The start of the trip started smoothly. I was just getting back into the flow of things and enjoying clipping European bolts again. I was only there for 7 days which isn’t a long time for a sports trip. By the forth day, much to my surprise, I ended up getting to the top of an 8a called Ergomatria at Wild Side. It was my first go of the day and I was only going up to refresh my memory of the moves and warm up a little and then found myself at the top having not fallen.
By the end of that trip I managed a couple of 7c’s, a 7c+ and two 8a’s!
This sparked a thought in my mind but I will fill you all in on that at a later date.
Leah Crane in Sella, Spain
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