Every spring for the last couple of years, Jo (8amyarse.com’s North Wales representative) has made the trip over to Catalunya for a long weekend of sunny bolt-clipping. Two years ago, we conquered the Cavall Bernat (see the celebratory video here), and last year we had a succesful trip to Rodellar, just over the border in Aragón, with Jo ticking a 7b+ and me redpointing my first ‘proper’ 7b. This year, Jo is coming back out here for more – as long as the airports aren’t shut again by volcanic ash! Although last year’s trip was great, we were having so much fun in Rodellar that we actually bailed out on one of our initial goals, which was to go to Riglos, a short drive from Rodellar, and do a route called La Fiesta de Los Biceps.

‘Biceps’ is reknowned as being one of the best routes in the whole world (quite literally). It is about 8 pitches long, and the final five pitches overhang at about a consistent 20ish degrees. The beauty is that the rock at Riglos is large-stone conglomerate (my non-technical term for it) which basically means that there is an abundance of enormous jugs, allowing ‘Biceps’ to get to the top at a relatively amenable grade of 7a. Everybody I know who’s done it, and everything I’ve ever read about it, all agree: it is a must-do route!

The only worry I have is that once you get past the first overhanging pitch, there is no way down, so in actual fact it is quite committing. However Jo tells me that he is redpointing 7b+ fairly easily at the moment, and I have been onsighting 7a consistently over the last few months (and have also bagged a couple of soft 7b+s), so hopefully between us we shouldn’t have too much trouble. Go to this link here to see tons of photos of the route (and, if you’re Spanish is up to scratch, read about it too).

My other goal on the trip is to have a go a a route called Pince Sans Rire in Rodellar. It is an uber-classic 7b+ that climbs two perfect tufas, up steepening rock. Apparently it is a reasonable proposition for 7b+, “but only if you’re fit”. WTF?! We’ll see, I reckon Jo will tick pretty easily, but maybe not me. There is also a nice 7c called Egocentrismo that Jo had his eye on last year. Apparently he thought it looked quite amenable, whereas I thought it looked nails. I guess we’ll find out!

Jo arrives on Friday morning earlyish, so the plan is to drive direct to Rodellar, have an easy afternoon on Friday and set up camp, go to Riglos and tick Biceps on Saturday, have an easy day on Sunday, then try and tick some things on Monday. Jo flies out on Tuesday morning. I’m knackered just thinking about it!

I was back ‘proper’ climbing again last weekend, and it felt great. We went to Espadelles,  a jaw-dropping sector at Margalef. Recently, Margalef has been featured a fair amount in the international climbing press as one of the four ’super-crags’ of Catalunya for hard routes (the others being Siurana, Oliana and Santa Linya). Last year when we were here, we saw Dani Andrada bolting a new route, Tomas Mrazeck knocking around, and Chris Sharma filming with the BigUp crew. Wow.

This year things were different, the crag was empty. At first I was a bit puzzled but by midday it was crystal clear why: Espadelles comes into the sunshine in the afternoon, and this weekend marked the opening weekend of the ’shady-climbing’ season here in Catalunya. Even though the temperature was only about 25 degrees, the sun is so much stronger here than it is in Britain, and so from now until October we’ll be hunting out the north facing crags.

Still, we had a morning’s worth of shade and after warming up I onsighted a 7a which was undoubtedly the easiest 7a I have ever been on. 6c+ methinks but as always I’ll take the tick! Afterwards I wanted a crack at a 7b but PJ was hogging it :) , so I tried a 7a+ further left (see photo) which, according to PJ and Max, is a classic. What they didn’t tell me was that it is also the living end of 7a+, so my onsight attempt ended pretty quickly. I worked it to the top and felt that, actually, it was 7b at least. Funny grading at Margalef.

So after a lunchtime snooze we all got back on the projects and went for the tick. However by this time the sun was out in full-force and conditions were crap, the heat was just so draining. After a few goes at the early crux of his 7b, PJ nalied the sequence and cruised up, before muffing the final sequence and falling within spitting distance of the chains. I got back on the 7a+ but couldn’t get through the crux sequence. I rested and had one more go but it was a waste of time, the sweat was dripping off my forehead and both hands and feet were slipping off. Max had a couple of cracks at an 8b which, like many routes at Espadelles, has a crux pretty much right off the ground. Unfortunately he didn’t have much luck, but he had onsighted 8a the day before, so I’ll let him off.

So no real ticks, but a good day was had by all nevertheless. Espadelles will have to wait til next season though. Shady crags, here we come!

Well thank god that Jo has been posting (with some great photos) because otherwise this blog would be a boring place. As it happen I’ve been pretty ill recently, struck down down by a serious dose of man-flu. The worst thing of all was that it meant I spent my easter weekend in bed feeling crap. Boring.
Anyway last week I was a bit better so I went up to the tunnel for a couple of sessions, but I wasn’t fully recovered so wasn’t on form. The good news is that I’m now pretty much 100% again, and so I’m off up to the tunnel to meet PJ and Max tonight.

This weekend there’ll be no climbing but hopefully next weekend I’ll get a whole two days in row. I really want to get to Montgrony because the tufas there should sharpen me up for team 8amyarse’s May trip to Rodellar!

Well, sort of.  Just enough good weather to convince me that the cragging season has begun anyway…  My plan is to cram as much climbing into the first half of 2010 as possible – come August i’ll be job hunting and concentrating on supporting my family rather than indulging my climbing passion, but that’s ages away!

So, Saturday began nice and sunny.  We were spoiled for choice really but opted for Rhoscolyn.  I’ve got some great memories of this crag and have ticked my way through most of the classics over the years.  In fact, without stepping up a grade there’s not much more I want to do there (yeah, I know I harped on about stepping up a grade last time but that doesn’t mean jumping straight on nails overhanging E6s!).  Except of course, for The Viper.  This is an E4 5c that branches out from Centrefold, unfortunately the entire middle section of Fallen Block Zawn was streaming with water.  Simon picked out the best looking dry line to warm up on… this happened to be the start of The Jub Jub bird linking into Godzilla to finish.  Not the best warm up at E4 but Simon found it straightforward enough making it look about VS.  I struggled, and had a bit of a paddy on the top overhang.  Well, maybe it was a bit wet.  Or a bit loose, or something.

Anyway, onto Plan B – Electric Blue.  This photogenic pitch seems to be climbed more frequently as a DWS these days and I can see why – it’s bloody pumpy and a right arse to fiddle in gear, but great climbing.  Thank god for cams (how did anyone climb before these?)

Slightly dodgy weather on Sunday led us back to the default option of Tremadog.  Quick warm up on Geireagle (again casually dispatched by Simon) followed by my usual thrash with Vulture.  This is rapidly becoming my bloody nemesis, but at least my annual failure point is marginally higher each time.  So – closer, but still no cigar… quite.

Next up was Groove of Horror, for Simon, not me as I was fairly boxed by now.  An old Roland Edwards route, with some aid I think, this route is now graded E5 6a and described as “extremely strenuous”.  Hardly surprising that I don’t know anyone whose done it, or even heard of any ascents.  Alas, today it was not to be – the crack was gopping and forced a timely retreat.  Erebrus was a worthy alternative – what a great pitch.  I had seconded it before but don’t remember it being so hard, quite glad I wasn’t leading to be honest.   We finished off with the first pitch of Itch, in the gathering gloom.

Not a bad weekend, all told.  My ridiculously optimistic title will already be sounding pretty stupid by the time you read this – snow forecast tomorrow, would you believe it?  Bloody Wales! Nothing for it but to get back on my garage board… those 8a’s don’t climb themselves, y’know!

El Dard from the approach path

Another day’s climbing in Catalunya, another amazing crag that nobody’s heard of, and nobody visits. Or at least, that’s the way it seemed yesterday as PJ and I arrived at Sector El Dard, near the village of Arbolí in the Prades mountains. Amazing rock, views down to the sea, a 5 minute approach from the car, and nobody else there. What more could you want?

It was interesting reading Jo’s post about trad climbing in Tremadog last week as it made me start thinking about trad climbing again. In general the Catalan limestone would be very difficult to trad climb as it is very compact and doesn’t have nearly as many features and cracks. However, the first few sectors we saw at El Dard were much more ‘British’ in style.The warm up sector reminded me very much of Wildcat in the Peak District – grey, rough rock set among the trees and with ample opportunities for placing protection.

However, after warming up on a couple of nice 6s, we walked a bit further round to ‘the main event’, where I was forcefully reminded that we were most definately in Spain: a bulging 35m wall of perfect orange-grey limestone, split by a handful of hairline cracks, and an entry grade of 7b. Yep, definately Spain (or, rather, Catalunya).

The goal for the day was to try a 7c called El Marginao, which climbed the central ‘climb-me!’ crack from the bottom right to the very top. I haven’t been training very much recently and I know 7c is out of my reach, but I knew that it was graded 7a+ to the intermediate lower off, so my plans were to try to onsight the 7a+ bit, and the work the moves on the upper 7c section. Luckily the first bit went to plan and the 7a+ was dispatched without too much trouble, but unfortunately the 7c was another matter. Even resting on reach bolt, I had clean run out of strength by the end, and just couldn’t do the final moves to the anchor. They weren’t particularly difficult, I was just creamed.

So anyway after one half-hearted RP attempt (where I fell off the crux of the 7a+ bit) I gave up and looked elsewhere. PJ recommended a technical 6c+/7a called Peus al Foc. Even after 45mins rest I was still tired, and I only just scraped up it onsight. I was pretty pleased but completely trashed, so it was back to the warm up sector to finish on a couple of ‘easy’ 6bs which I very nearly fell off.

PJ was climbing well and made serious in-roads on the 7c El Marginao. He did all the moves first go and had a pretty good crack at it first RP, falling off the crux moves right before the anchor (the ones that had defeated me). After a long rest he had a second bash but it was obvious from the start that he was tired, and after failing low down he dogged up to get the clips. It’s such a long and draining route – and with the crux right at the end, it’s quite a difficult route to red-point.

And at that precise moment it started to rain. It’s been a pretty miserable winter and spring in Catalunya to be honest, everybody’s sick of the rain.

So, how am I doing climbing wise? Well, the truth is I’ve been slack in the last 6 weeks or so, what with skiing and work trips and so forth, and haven’t been climbing or training that much. Jo is coming out for a ‘Team 8amyarse.com’ trip to Rodellar and Riglos in May, so my goal is get to a bit fitter for that. Still, I’m onsighting 7a/+ ish fairly confidently at the moment, so that’s not bad. But my experience on El Marginao has taught me that 7cs don’t climb themselves!

Well, this is to be my first ever post on 8amyarse… and my blogging virginity is about to go up in smoke which is a strange feeling.   Many thanks to Alun for inviting a contribution from a North Wales resident.  As i’m also gunning for the stratospheric heights of F8a sometime during the next decade, a viewpoint from the traditional crucible of Snowdonia might provide an interesting contrast to the sun-drenched sport climbing mecca of Catalunya, where climbing 8a is probably quite easy!  Just kidding – I just mean there are lots to chose from over there.

Anyway, for those of you who don’t know me, my name is Jo Bertalot, i’m 32 (and a bit), and so far have redpointed 7c, onsighted 7b and a fair few E5’s.  My goal this year is to go up a grade on each of the above.  Achievable? Well, maybe.

The weather last weekend was amazing: high pressure, clear blue skies, warm.  Keith was free and keen to climb, and where better to rekindle the old trad-climbing fire than Tremadog, the place where it all began, for me at least.  I grew up in Pwllheli, just 30 minutes away and served a fairly typical apprenticeship on the lower grade routes here.  I knew I had got to the top of Pincushion before but have a hazy memory of using a point of aid on the overhang, belayed by my ever-patient Dad.  Time to settle the score, and see if I had improved a smidgen in 15 years of climbing!

This really is an amazing pitch which has a bit of everything, a chimney thrutch, an awkward crux under and through the overlap followed by a long HVS / E1 slab.  I certainly struggled but just about made it after an incredible shaking-leg episode. Early season nerves!  Don Sargeant the omnipresent CC climbing photographer happened to be on hand snapping away – very nice, especially with the next Tremadog guide due out this year?

We followed this up with Barbarian which was one of my early HVS leads (as it was back then).  I still have tons left to do at Tremadog, mostly routes that I have been putting off for years and a couple that i’ve tried and failed on before. I might even make it back this week, especially now that my Scottish Winter plans have been well and truly scuppered by tropical temperatures and collapsing cornices.

The view of Siurana, across the valley from El Falco

Yesterday the sun shone brightly and PJ and I made a return visit to Arbolí. You may recall that the last time I was there was with Ian Lau, on the first day of our Siurana trip, I didn’t write too much about Arbolí, because the majority of the trip was spent falling off things at Siurana. But the climbing at Arbolí deserves its own post, so here it is.

The main interest in the sectors surrounding the remote village of Arbolí is a huge wall called El Falco. It is a spectacular wall, varying between vertical and slightly overhanging, and capped with overhangs. Pretty much all of the 30 single pitch routes are over 30m in length, and a handful of belay chains are a full 40m above the ground. When you consider the spacious and convenient access to the crag base, and the spectacular views across the valley to Siurana, El Falcó is definately up there with some of the best that Catalunya has to offer. PJ and I went along with French chap that PJ met recently, called Max, and when were there we met up with a couple of his Catalan friends, so there was a nice crew of us. Here’s a little video to give you an idea of what it’s like.

The wall at El Falco

With such long routes I wasn’t particularly keen to be redpointing hard stuff, and instead decided to go for a day of onsighting, which I haven’t done for a while. After a couple of nice long 6cs to warm up, I was feeling good and decided to have a bash at Borinot, a beautiful looking 7a line up the centre of the crag. 7a always gives me the willies – it’s such a psychological thing because I know that I can onsight 6c+, and 7a isn’t that much harder, and I should be able to onsight it. But that adds it’s own pressure, and so it was a little bit of trepidation that I set off. Technically speaking, I had already blown the onsight – I had half-watched Max climbing it and the clips were in, but nevertheless I was very chuffed to reach the anchors without too much difficulty. Strictly I can only claim the flash, but personally I was very pleased, regardless of what any ethic police may say.

So then after a good rest it was time to try Chanidangersch, a 7a+ immediately to the left. This was to be a true onsight attempt as I had not seen anybody on it and had to put the clips in myself. The route is a full 40m long, and after 20 minutes of climbing there I found myself, 38m up, absolutely exhausted, staring at one last final pull to reach the chains.

Well, I blew it. My left hand uncurled from the crimp and I was off. I found the ferocity and volume of the swearing that followed shocking, even as I felt the words leave my mouth. I was crushed, not just because of getting so close, but because I had held it together for 38 effing metres, which is psychologically draining. To be honest, I think mentally I was too weak, I should have just got aggressive and blasted through it (needless to say, after a couple of minutes rest on the rope, I found the move easy. Typical!). I didn’t give it everything I had and so that’s why I failed.

Still, it was a brilliant day’s climbing. PJ was chuffed to onsight a 40m 7b, just to the right of my 7a+, and Max worked the move on an 8a that looks like it never gets done, and said it was awesome. I’m not sure when I’ll be back to El Falco next, but there’s plenty left there for me to go at, so I hope it’s not too long.

Max on Bon Noi, 8a

25m slackline in Poblenou park

Yes yes I have been training, but that’s boring and showing you an amusing video of me falling off a slackline is far more interesting :P

Today the weather was a bit windy so Pau and I put up the slackline in the park. The advantage of this is that there are more anchors so, after playing around on a baby 10m line we rolled it out to nearly its full length of 25m. The first thing to note is that a long slackline is much more intimidating. It moves around so much more but it actually makes it much more satisfying – as the line moves you find that you have to just go with the flow, and as the line is moving up and down from side to side it feels as it you are floating. I felt like I was Chow-Yun Fat in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, in the bit where he’s balancing on the tip of a tree branch.

Well, up until I fell off…

Pau on the slackline, and DJ making a sandwich!

Sunshine! Warm temperatures! Yes, spring has arrived here in Catalunya. The forecast is for settled weather and temps in the high teens for the next week at least, and the air has that certain tang that heralds the arrival of longer evenings and warm weather. To celebrate, yesterady lunchtime Djanira and I went down to beach with our friend Pau. Pau is a keen outdoorsy person and used to climb a fair bit, but since becoming a father last year hasn’t found much time to get to the crags. To compensate he’s got himself a classic climber’s toy, which can be setup up almost anywhere at short notice – a slackline!

We found a couple of perfectly-spaced posts down on the beach, as you can see in the photo. I had never tried slacklining before, and I didn’t realise it would be quite so difficult! For the first half-hour, just standing on the thing was almost impossible, it wobbles so much. However, dyfal donc a dyr a garreg, as we say in Welsh*, and after a while I was able to string a couple of steps together. It’s amazingly addictive, and you learn pretty fast.

Pau is a bit of an expert and can do all sorts of fancy things like jump-starts, little skips, 180s etc. It’s cool because you can use the slackness of the line like a trampoline to help you jump into the air. I reckon next week I’ll be nailing things like this (skip to 2 minutes to see the grand finale):

* metaphorically translated as “if at first you don’t succeed…”

Paul pulling into the sun on a 7a+ at Masriudoms

This weekend saw Paul Mealor and Ian Lau visiting us in Barcelona. The original plan was to get a crew of us down to Siurana, but for various reasons we ended up staying in Barcelona and making day trips. Fortunately, this is still no bad thing!

Not that things went to perfectly accordingly to plan, even so – the idea was that we would drive up to Montgrony for a day on Saturday, though that was scuppered when Paul and Ian’s Friday night plane was diverted to Valencia, and instead of arriving at 9.30, they rang my doorbell at past 2am!

So after a short lie in we decided to cut our losses and go to Gelida. I’m beginning to get a leetle bit bored of going there now, but the facts are that it is a great crag with loads of quality routes across the grades, so in our situation it was a bit of a no-brainer. The weather was spectacular, Ian onsighted his first 7a and Paul his first 6c, and a good day was had by all.

The next day the weather was overcast with a 100% chance of rain. However, PJ had a secret weapon up his sleeve – the cave at Masriudoms! After an hour and a half on the AP-7, we parked the van and walked in, to be greeted by this sight:

First view of Masriudoms cave

It’s very easy to run out of words when describing the Masriudoms cave. Awesome, huge, amazing, scary etc. etc. It’s about 1oo metres high from bottom to top, and so big and steep that after and hour or of being there, we realised that at some point after we had arrived it had started raining, but we hadn’t even noticed.

Paul on "Inhumana al Forn", 6b+, Masriudoms

A rare photo of Mr Lau, pulling around the arete of "ATP", 6c, Masriudoms

Needless to say, the climbing there tends to be in the upper 7s and 8s, and so not much was done – PJ was the only one with a reasonable excuse, in that he was still tired after going there the day before and ticking a 7c! The rest of us ticked the ‘warm-up’ routes, which were still awesome, and then dangled around on some harder stuff; although Lau came pretty close to red-pointing a nice looking 7a+: check out the video.

The next day PJ was working so the three of us headed to Pas de la Mala Dona. It’s a nice place with a fine selection of routes, but I wasn’t expecting a spectacular day to be honest. I had been climbing poorly all weekend, getting shut down totally on a 7c at Gelida, and dogging my way up a 7b at Masriudoms (great route, but undoubtedly the hardest 7b I’ve ever got on). So when I arrived on Sunday, I was content just to go ticking a lot of nice 6s, and completely ignore the two 3* 7b+s in the cave sector. Honest.

Fortunately for me, the rain had different ideas and, after warming up, a light drizzle picked up which forced us to shelter in the cave. It was my lead so rather reluctantly (honest!) I tied on to have a go a Les Garretes del Garraf, 7b+. To my immense surprise, I pulled through all the moves first try, resting only briefly on three of the clips. As a lowered off I realised it that the redpoint was definately on, and after a decent rest I tied on and ticked it first RP – though it was touch and go on the crux. Lau was on camera-phone video duties:

Needless to say I was totally chuffed, and after Paul ticked a nice 6c (going on 7a) first redpoint, the sun came out and it was time to take the chaps to the airport.

Enjoying the late afternoon sunshine at Pas de la Mala Dona, Garraf

So, a good weekend was had by all, and with talk of a bigger gang visiting Barcelona at Easter, and Jo B confirmed for an attempt at Fiesta de los Biceps in May, my climbing year is beginning to plan itself out nicely. And as for my goal of 7c by the end of the season?  Hmm I don’t know. I need a fair bit more mileage on 7b and 7b+ to even think about it yet. But maybe.

Alun enjoying Masriudoms!

Check out the rest of the photos of the weekend, including some more of the impressive cave, here.