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

If at first you don't succeed...

Going for the pogo on Orejas

I've been wanting to start some kind of blog forever, but have just been too busy/lazy to actually set one up. Now it's thirty plus degrees outside and climbing is effectively impossible, I have some time to summarise the last four months of trips. This is the condensed version!

After Christmas in England I spent a week in Albarracin in January trying to climb Orejas de las Regletas, a short crimpy 8A. The crux is a huge deadpoint from an undercut to a sloper. As it was a short boulder I figured that endurance wouldn't be a factor, and quickly did all of the moves. I linked from two moves in to the end, but could never stick the crux from the start. After a short session I realised I'd developed blood blisters on three fingers of the hand that held the undercut crimp, it's not even sharp! Blood blisters take at least a week to grow out so it was game over as far as that boulder was concerned. I'd also managed to get pretty sick from sleeping in my car in below freezing conditions.

Madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. In February I  got an unexpected week off and was back to Albarracin doing the same thing, with pretty much the same results. The links felt easier but i still couldn't link in a session, and one session is all you get when your skin deteriorates this fast.

Origami

During Easter I headed north, with one goal. Origami 8A+ is a 24 move sandstone boulder on tiny crimps in the largely unknown (outside of Spain) bouldering area of Santa Gadea. If Albarracin is the Spanish Fontainebleau, then Santa Gadea is Southern Sandstone. The rock is less compact and more crumbly, but it has the advantage of a cooler climate later in the spring than Albarracin. I had a whole week to work on the climb, and i really thought it was in the bag this time, but despite making my best link on it ever (all three cruxes and a sketchy top out over ankle breaking boulders) I couldn't add the four moves necessary to do the only link I haven't made so far-and the only one that counts. Some stats: I've spent about fifty-one days trying Origami. I have 7.9GB of footage of Origami on my laptop and I've fallen off the third and final crux at least fifty times, and that's a conservative estimate. I'm painfully aware that I'm approaching my 'one year anniversary' on the boulder, I started trying it in early June last year.  

We've just had a four day weekend in Spain so i headed to  El Escorial, a granite bouldering zone near Madrid to try Massive Attack 8A+ (there's apparently another Massive Attack in Magic Wood: climbers like trip hop, who knew...) But anyway, this one is a six move crimp problem. I'd had a session on it earlier in the year and managed to do all but one move and even make some links. As I pulled into the car park, I felt a sense of foreboding. People having picnics, t-shirts, sun cream, barbecues? We slogged up the hill in the blazing heat anyway to give it a try but it was clear: the bouldering season was officially over. 

Plan B was to head to to another area near Madrid and get some sport climbing in. Patones, where I used to go climbing as a student in Madrid in 2011 carries mixed memories for me. On one hand, it's the first place I sport climbed outdoors, I remember wobbling up my first ever 7a+ redpoint there. On the other, it's the place where I had all my climbing/camping gear stolen on a trip two summers ago. Needless to say, I already had my eye on a few things. The project in question was a short overhanging 7b. Jugs to start, jugs to finish, and a blank section in the middle. Way back in the mists of 2011 I had lowered, defeated from the crux bolt. This time, I put the draws in, dialled the sequence and executed. After four months of failure, it just felt good to close the book on something. I remembered how impossible that crux had felt in 2011 and realised that I had got what I wanted: proof of progression. It's not the constant failure as such that bothers me, but the niggling feeling that you're not moving forward, that the hours of training are time wasted. Here was proof positive that I am a (slightly) better climber now than in 2011. A mere 7b redpoint you say? It's not the same as an ascent of a big project like Origami, but it's better than nothing at least for now.

In two weeks I'm heading to Fontainebleau and I couldn't be more excited. As usual there are plenty of things that shut me down last time I went, also in 2011, and like the proverbial climbing elephant, I never forget!

Patones: Madrid's local limestone crag