Hostile Environment

what 99% completion looks like

 After falling off the lip of Flor de Loto (8B) I was mentally exhausted. I'd spent nearly three months
trying and the cold weeks were rapidly running out. The rising temps, the waiting between sessions and the knowing that every single try could be THE try were killing me. Then the mini-heatwave came. I'm almost grateful it did as it gave me a concrete excuse to stop trying something that was officially Not-Fun-Any-More. I'm haunted by how close I came. Literally the last move. Not figuratively. Hold the swing and a 6A mantle leads to glory. Oh well.

The twenty degree heat killed the bouldering season dead for a while. I decided what I really wanted to do with my life was get good at sport climbing. Sector Stradivarius in Patones is the Frankenjura of Madrid. Short steep routes and painful tweaky pockets abound. I did a 7b+ called Turco, which was apparently flashed by Gullich back in the day. Nice to find a bit of history. Also had a play on an 8a which will give me something to fall off the last move of forever.

With the hot weather showing no signs of abating in Madrid, I decided it was time to hit Albarracin. Normally I'd have already been several times by now, but I guess the negative news that the area has been getting had made me wary. New restrictions? No chalk? No sleeping in cars in the upper car park?

When we arrived though, it was business as usual. A lot of climbers, a lot of chalk and a ton of camper-vans in the upper car park. I was amazed how exactly the same things were after all the fuss made on climbing media a few months ago. The most damage to the natural beauty of the area is (ironically) being caused by the local council, who are midway through 'renovating' the paths which access the cave paintings. Previously a normal woodland path led both to the cave paintings and to the main sector. Apparently this unobtrusive path just wasn't pathy enough so now the council is in the process of installing gravel paths bordered by wooden logs. I say installing because they definitely hadn't finished. There were piles of metal and logs everywhere, tracks from mini-diggers, even tools abandoned by the side of the path. Even if/when the work is finished, the path is a bit of an eyesore and completely unnecessary. Last time I checked, Spain wasn't rich enough to be chucking money at such pointlessness. It seems funny that the council responsible for this is presumably the same one that criticises climbers over their perceived impact.

A wee analogy for you. The internet is born. People all over the world use it to communicate and share information. A small minority of trolls use the internet to attack and insult people.

A climbing area is discovered in Teruel. People come from all over the world to climb some sick boulders. A small minority of uninformed bellends (for want of a better word) treat the area badly: littering and tickmarking.

If a politician lobbied to ban the internet due to the actions of trolls, he/she would (rightly) be laughed out of the room. In the second case, councils and some climbers see banning climbing as the logical step to take. The law exists to punish those responsible (the trolls/bellends) and if it cannot do that, no law is preferable to one that punishes innocent people (responsible internet users/climbers).  Yes, as climbers we should be tidy and respectful and blah blah blah, but we've also got to confront this faulty 'we deserve what we get' logic when we hear it.

Just eyeing up that third hold...

After getting shut down on some of the harder stuff, I headed over to try one of my eterna-projects. La Fuente (7C). It's a 4 move problem on a fifteen degree overhang: really short. Hands are all positive crimps but the feet are terrible. It feels...real technical. I'd tried it every trip since I first started coming to Albarracin three years ago, and never stuck the third hold.

I arrived already warmed up and due to the magic of multiple stacked pads I pulled on at the crux, used some flexy madness to snag a far right foothold and landed on that most magical of all places: the third hold!

After a quick rest, I pulled on at the start and fired it off first go. The weird thing was how easy it felt. Especially considering the trips and trips I'd never even been close to sticking that third move. Bouldering is weird like that. Fortunately I have my own grading system based on how long you've tried a problem for. In this system, Origami is 8B+ and L'Helecoptere in Font is probably the hardest boulder in the world.

I am not a happy bunny right now...

Day Two: and I was determined to get some hard climbing done and I wasn't going to let some light snow put me off. We headed to Orejas de las Regletas (8A), another eterna-project. As I warmed up the snow intensified. I tried the crux move: a huge deadpoint to a sloper, and had to laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of the situation. As soon as my head pulled round the lip to line up the move, flurries of snow started hitting me right in the face. I couldn't keep my eyes open! Pretty soon even climbing with my eyes shut was impossible as everything got wet. Game over, until next time.

Sunny Spain