The final hurrah of my winter of bouldering was to be 10 days over Easter, cranking and eating pastries in Fontainebleau. We arrived on a rainy, grey Saturday morning after driving through the night (there was only space for the roof box on the 2:20 AM Eurotunnel!) and spent the rest of the day sleeping before getting some supplies from the most horrifically large supermarket you can imagine. We took at a walk at Cul de Chien, touched some wet holds and retired miserably for dinner.

The next morning we rose late (no rush, it was still raining), had a lazy breakfast and wondered what to do. The forecast ahead looked bleak and we desperately wanted to do some actual climbing. Time to get creative.

Since we had no ropes or gear we had to constrain ourselves to bouldering options. We tossed around the obvious names. Magic Wood? Too wet. Albarracín? Too far. But Sadie had heard of a place called Annot in South France. It’s not a well-known destination so we didn’t know what to expect, but a brief glance at the forecast (full sun for the next week) made the decision for us. We packed the car and settled in for an 8 hour drive south.

The gamble paid off. Following directions from the free topo, we turned up a dirt track just along the road outside the town. The track twists its way up a pine-laden mountainside and the sector you visit more or less depends on which hairpin bend you stop at. It’s just about drivable in a normal car but there are lots of potholes and bumps which makes the process of getting up and down quite a pain in the arse. It takes about 15-30 minutes depending on the sector.

The rock is sandstone, but coarser than Font which makes for good friction but rapid skin loss when sliding off slopers. Some of the rock is great quality, other bits are quite crumbly. Annot suffers a little from low traffic, which means that some problems are dirty and unclimbable in their current state. Others are fine.

The grading system is weird. It uses the “B” system which apparently has origins in the Peak District at some point. Clearly I’m too young to understand, but we found that they roughly corresponded to “soft V grades”, so a B6 felt about V4-5 perhaps. We didn’t spent too much time worrying about this.

It’s not Font, but there is plenty to get on with and some real gems if you put the effort in to seek them out. You have to work a bit harder, but the reward in our case was sunshine and tranquillity (we were sharing the forest with not more than 10 others).

Here’s where we climbed:

• Paf le Chien: We fell off some good harder things including Paf le chien itself and Cartondulé. A lot of the easier stuff was a bit dirty though.
• Madness: Clean and good rock, easy access being not far up the track and close  to the parking spot. Highlights were Bacalauréat (super fun dyno), Le gymnasium and L’ex grosse lunule.
• La Crete: My favourite spot, featuring a great problem right next to a beautiful view of the valley. The problem is aptly named Panoramix. Another excellent line was Toit du cul du loup.
• Requiem for Block: Difficult to find as it’s buried in the woods. There are some cool looking harder things here but we weren’t pulling too hard as it was the fourth day on! On the walk in we stumbled upon Place Vendome which looks good but lacking in warm-ups.

After four days in Annot the forecast was looking better in Font so we decided to spend a rest day driving back north. In the end it was a double rest day as the weather gods turned their backs on us once again. But we did finally spend a very nice dry day climbing at Isatis before returning home.

After doing so much bouldering this winter I am now nursing some sore fingers (doh) but feeling super psyched to get back on a rope and climb some longer things!

I’ve just returned from a week in Cogne in the Italian Alps, on my first proper ice climbing trip. I’ve been trying to gain the skills needed to get into winter climbing for a few years now (doing some winter walking in Wales in 2013 and an ice climbing course near Madrid in January 2014), so it was great to finally bring it all together this season.

Before the trip I had the chance to practise a bit in North Wales. I spent a weekend in January doing some dry tooling in the slate quarries, which was a good way to get a feel for climbing with axes. A couple of weeks later the winter conditions in Wales got pretty decent and I spent another weekend doing some actual winter climbing around Clogwyn Du.

My companions for the trip were some chaps from The Castle: Jake, Toby and Kuba. Jake and Toby had done plenty of ice climbing before, whereas Kuba and I were a bit newer to it all. During the week we all swapped around with partners which kept things interesting, and enabled Kuba and I to learn quickly from the other two.

I feel very lucky to have had the opportunity to climb with more experienced friends on my first trip. This gave me the confidence to fairly quickly move on to harder routes and lead some WI5 pitches by the end of the week.

On the first day we all got warmed up on E Tutto Relativo. I climbed with Toby and he lead the crux pitch, which was a relief since it was running with water which made my fingers completely numb…

On the second day Kuba and I took on the classic Lillaz Gulley while Jake and Toby went for Lau Bij. This was good fun once we finally got on it; compounded navigational errors initially lead to us spending ages wading through deep powder. The less said about that the better!

The third day was pretty productive. Jake and I ticked off both Tuborg and Il Candelabro del Coyote. I was keen to lead something a bit harder so took the crux pitch of Tuborg by the vertical left hand ice pillar. It was a bit thin at the bottom and I felt quite nervous stepping on, but I eventually topped out after subjecting Jake to a rather long belay session!

On this third day I’d borrowed a test pair of Black Diamond crampons in a mono-point configuration. Before this I’d been climbing in my Grivel walking crampons which can only be used with dual points and are not really designed for climbing. The difference was huge; I was able to trust my feet way more. I couldn’t face going back to the Grivel ones so on our rest day I got myself a shiny pair of Petzl Lynx’s from the local climbing shop, a decision I did not regret!

Following the rest day Jake and Toby wanted to get on their big route, the mega-classic Repentence! We all grimaced when the alarm sounded at 5.30 but it paid off. Kuba and I ticked off Patri de Droite (amazing long crux pitch) followed by Patri de Gauche, while Jake and Toby got Repentence done. Toby took a huge whipper onto a screw which sounded pretty exciting but the screw held and he didn’t get hurt fortunately.

The next day Toby and I got on Stella Artice. I lead the WI5 crux pitch which meant that I’d achieved my goal for the week. Happy days!

The final day was pretty special. We’d been looking up at this amazing ice pillar the whole week, which hosts a route called Hard Ice In The Rock Direct. Apparently it doesn’t form up all that often, and the crux pitch gets the hair-raising grade of WI6. I’d been trying to persuade Jake that we should do it, although admittedly he didn’t take much persuading. I lead the first pitch, 60 metres at about WI4+, then Jake lead the crux which I found pretty pumpy even on second! Solid effort. We swung leads on a couple of easy pitches, then I lead the final pitch which at about WI5. It wasn’t hooked out at all so it was really nice to get to climb on some pristine ice.

We stayed in a self-catered apartment at Les Nigritelles in Lillaz, which was clean, modern, and had everything we needed. Its location meant that we didn’t need to do any driving when climbing in Valeille Rive which I’m sure helped us to get on routes before other parties. And check out the view!

This year my girlfriend, Emily, decided that she wanted to go home to Melbourne to spend a sunny xmas and new year with her family and friends over there. So when my friend Brett announced that he was heading to the Spanish bouldering destination Albarracín I didn’t take much persuading.

This was right up my street because I had decided that after returning from Turkey I would dedicate myself to bouldering for the winter. Doing my first 8a sport climb was one of my goals for 2014 – I got close but I didn’t quite achieve it. On the 8a’s I’ve tried I think often I’m doing moves which are too close to my limit – that’s what makes them hard. It’s possible, but I need to battle through lots of moves which are close to my limit. Or get stronger, which is why I’ve decided to boulder all winter.

I’ve never properly sunk my teeth into bouldering before. I use it for training at the climbing wall, but when I climb outside I usually prefer routes. So by explicitly deciding not to do routes for a while I was excited to see what would happen if I fully committed to bouldering, inside and outside.

Albarracín is a pretty, old town located in a valley in the province of Teruel (somewhere in the middle of Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia).

The central part of the town is actually very attractive and has a lot of history and culture. For this reason the town is popular with normal tourists and not just climbers. It’s quite common as a climber to find yourself in little-known places where the only outsiders who visit are other climbers. It’s not the case in Albarracín, where there are many tourists who probably have a lot more money to spend than the climbers. This perhaps underlies some of the access issues which have come up in the past and have flared up again recently. That said, we didn’t actually have any problems in reality.

The climbing itself is found in the pine forest about 4 KM from the town. Unfortunately it’s a bit far to walk to and from every day (particularly with bouldering pads) and there’s no accommodation next to the climbing, so you kind of need a car. But it would probably be easy to hitch to and fro so long as you’re not trying to do it with 3 pads in tow.

Unlike Font, all of the climbing sectors at Albarracín are located within walking distance of each other. This is really nice and means that it’s possible to hit multiple sectors in a day if the fancy takes you.

The sectors we spent most of our time at were Techos (which means “roofs” – a not-so-subtle hint about the predominant style of climbing here), La Fuente and Arrastradero. We also dabbled in the Parking and Tierra Media sectors, but there are several more to go at. I have to return!

Having not done a lot of outdoor bouldering before I didn’t really have expectations about what I’d be able to achieve during the trip. So I was pleasantly surprised that I managed to tick a 7B roof climb called Eclipse, in Techos.

Unfortunately I managed to get a finger injury in the process, so the victory was somewhat bittersweet. Having practised the moves the previous day I came along fresh with the intention of having a good angry go on it. I warmed up on some easier climbs and then waited my turn since the problem already had pads underneath and other people were trying. As I watched I reminded myself of the beta and got quite psyched. I pulled on and just went for it, fully expecting to fall at the first hard move.

But I didn’t fall. What did happen, however was that I felt a sudden explosion of tinglyness in my right ring finger. Facing a split-second decision about whether to drop off or continue I thankfully decided, against my better judgement, to carry on. After a bit of a battle I managed to top out. I tentatively prodded my finger knowing that it was injured but still desperately hoping it was just some odd feeling that would subside any moment. But no, I was injured and I didn’t do any more hard climbing for the rest of the trip. This was actually not a disaster since we had New Year coming up, and I was due to leave soon after that anyway.

I believe that my mistake was that I didn’t warm up enough. Doing some easy routes was not enough warm up to start pulling hard on a route like this. I should have tried the individual moves in isolation first in order to warm up my fingers but I got too psyched and just went for it. A lesson for the future! Fortunately my finger seems to be healing quite quickly so I think it’s just a strained tendon rather than something more serious like a rupture.

Another highlight route for me was A Ciegas, also at Techos. Brett had researched this one before the trip and we actually had a play on it on our very first day. We realised it was pretty hard, but came back another day where I didn’t seem to make much progress at all. Finally we came back on a third day and thanks to some beta which Brett had spotted in a video I was finally able to unlock the crux.

Two things made this climb stand out for me. One was the line: it goes straight up a steep overhanging arete which is just begging to be climbed when you see it. Secondly, the technicality. It was not just a case of jumping on and pulling hard; the beta was very specific in the end and heel hooks were crucial for me. A Ciegas staunchly resisted giving away its secrets but eventually I unlocked a sequence which worked and the battle I’d had made that all the more satisfying.

A Ciegas has a complementary route named A Oscuras, which traverses in from the left before going into the shared crux. After unlocking A Ciegas I was also able to do A Oscuras. I think it’s a little bit easier but getting two 7A+ ticks in a session felt pretty satisfying regardless!

Aside from the climbing, what made this whole trip special for me was the number of amazing people who we met. Bouldering seems more social in that respect. It felt like every couple of days we made some new awesome friends and I left Albarracín feeling warm and fuzzy, smiling from ear to ear. This was especially good for the New Year: having injured my finger I was determined to party hard and I’m happy to say I achieved my goal! Needless to say we didn’t do any climbing on the 1st of January…

Unfortunately the end of my trip was slightly marred by a train travel screw-up which involved me getting stranded overnight in Barcelona and then having to buy an expensive flight back to London the next day. For a few days this rather overshadowed the good feelings I had as I left, but now the grumpiness has worn off my lasting memory is still overwhelmingly positive. I really enjoyed going on a bouldering trip and I fully intend to do more in the future!

Geyikbayiri in Turkey is a place I always assumed I’d visit. I’d heard about the fabulous rock formations and the hundreds of quality lines. But given I try to avoid flying in order to keep my carbon footprint down, and given it’s quite a long way from my home in London, it had been consigned to the pile of “one day, as part of some epic trip, when I have unlimited time and freedom”.

So when Glyn Hudson phoned me up, excitedly proposing that we go there, I was initially a bit sceptical. There are many great climbing areas much closer to home, but Glyn had won a competition to get a place on the Petzl Roctrip, which was to travel through eastern Europe, finishing in Turkey. Glyn’s prize was to be flown out there for a week. But having a similar desire to avoid flying, he wondered about making the journey overland. Friends who are willing to undertake multi-day overland adventures to reach a destination equally accessible via a quick hop on a short-haul flight are few and far between, and Glyn’s list of such people contained only one person: me.

I agreed, of course. I knew it would be an epic adventure and a chance that wouldn’t come along again in a hurry. So I accepted that my time to visit Turkey had now come.

The plan emerges: Turkey via land and sea, with a week’s stop in Athens

There are basically two ways to reach Turkey overland by public transport.

The first involves pure train travel through Germany, on into eastern Europe, and finally on to Istanbul (visit The Man in Seat 61 for all the gorey details). Once in Istanbul, we’d need to undertake an overnight coach journey to get to the south of the country where Geyikbayiri is located.

The second route takes trains to Bari in southern Italy, and then ferries directly to the south of Turkey using Greece and its islands as stepping stones.

Either way involves at least 4 full days of travel, so we were keen to find a way to break the journey up a bit. I’d heard about the new Athens Climbing Guidebook, published only this year. Athens is surrounded by loads of quality crags, but has remained relatively unknown in the international climbing community, in part due to the absence of a comprehensive English-language guidebook.

Local climbers Antonis, Andreas and Giorgos set out to change this, launching a crowd-funding campaign to finance their work. They did an outstanding job and have produced a comprehensive, clear and useful book, packed with fantastic photos and an individual description for each and every route.

We went to have a look!

Overland to Athens in 3 days, 2 nights

The journey came off without a hitch. One thing I love about overland transport is that the transition from Home to Away comes slowly and gradually. Rather than being violently shoved from one city, culture and climate to another you ease into the trip. You arrive with a feeling of achievement and excitement rather than with an abrupt jolt, stepping sleepily off the plane into another soulless airport.

We took a morning Eurostar to Paris, where we had a bit of time to walk around in the sun and sample the wares from a boulangerie.

After lunch we boarded a TGV to Milan, and upon checking in to our hostel adjacent to Milano Centrale station, we sampled a local bar before getting some sleep.

An early train the next morning took us down the western side of Italy to Bari, where we dawdled through the cobbled streets of the old town, took a dip in the warm ocean, and enjoyed a hand made pizza in a wood-fired oven.

In the evening we boarded our boat to Patras, on the Western side of Greece.

It was a long one so we enjoyed a long sleep and a lazy breakfast the following morning, sunning ourselves on deck as we glided past Greek coastline and scattered islands.

Arriving around 1 PM, we shared a taxi to the town centre and boarded a coach to Kiato. In Kiato it was a short interchange onto a modern suburban railway taking us into Athens itself.

After picking up a hire car (fairly essential for Athens climbing, as the crags are dotted around) we checked into a campsite in Kifissia on the outskirks of the city. This turned out to be a good choice – the site was green and leafy with wifi and hot showers. It was close enough to the highway that we could get around easily, but not so close that we had to listen to traffic noise all night.

Mavrosouvola: a huge cavern with tufa dreadlocks

Looking at the guidebook, the crag which had stood out to us particularly strongly was the giant cavern of Mavrosouvola. Not having much in the way of tufa climbing back in the UK, we are drawn to these magnificent formations.

It did not disappoint and we lapped up the easier routes to try to build up some fitness for the rest of the trip.

Unusual climbing on an ancient marble quarry

The following day we sampled something a bit more unusual. It had never occurred to me that a marble crag might be a thing that existed. But if it does exist, of course it must be in Greece! In fact, Spilia Daveli is an ancient marble quarry which is said to have supplied stone for the building of the Acropoplis. And you can climb there!

The brilliant white rock certainly gives a unique experience. Onsighting is particularly hard because the holds are not particularly easy to spot, and any chalk left over from previous ascents blends in easily. That said, Glyn did some great onsights which I managed to flash thanks to his beta.

Unfortunately for us, not all of the routes are fully bolted. As we didn’t have any trad gear with us on the trip, we had to give these ones a miss.

More immaculate tufa climbing at Vrachokipos

The following Sunday we were able to meet some locals, including Giorgos and Andreas who worked on the guidebook, at another great crag named Vrachokipos. This was a welcome change as we had spent the week climbing on our own, but today the crag was packed with friendly people; beta and route recommendations came thick and fast.

A project emerges

For better or for worse, I had involved myself with a serious project at Mavrosouvala in the previous days. Aintes, if I could achieve it, would be my first route at 8a. I’d got to the “obsession” stage of redpointing and so I tried to take it fairly easy at Vrachokipos in order to conserve energy for some final attempts the following day. It was my last chance as we’d resume our journey to Turkey that night.

Usually when redpointing, I know when I’m about to be successful. Everything just comes together and it seems like victory is inevitable. I had this feeling while in an awkward knee-bar rest prior to the last hard section. I knew I’d do it this time. I was sure. But I was wrong: the moment I left the rest, I felt my muscles collapsing. As I desperately stabbed into the finger pocket I knew it was over and I left empty handed.

I don’t regret trying, it was a beautiful route, long and hard. I remember watching a video from Dave McLoed some time ago, where he said that if you know for sure that you’ll be able to achieve something you’re not really pushing yourself. Failure is part of the process, it provides verification that you’re really trying hard. In the end I “knew” I’d succeed, but actually I failed. I’m not sure what that means per McLoed’s rules but I was definitely trying hard!

One downside of having this project is there were quite a few crags around Athens which we didn’t make it to. There were quite a few other places which looked really good in the guidebook, so I’d be psyched to go back some time and check them out.

Onwards to Turkey

There are no direct ferries from Greece to Turkey, so it was with a deep sigh of resignation that we accepted we’d probably need to spend a day on one of Greece’s sun-baked islands in the Mediterranean. Perhaps we’d engage in a bit of swimming, purely as a form of “active rest” of course. And perhaps sample the local cuisine, strictly for research purposes, naturally.

There are a few possibilities but the route we chose took an overnight ferry to Rhodes, which is pretty close to Turkey. After a day out in Rhodes we then took an hour’s ferry ride to Marmaris in the early evening. We then had about a 5 hour drive in a hire car to Geyikbayiri.

Another possibility would have been to stop on the island of Kos and then take an onward ferry to Bodrum. Bodrum is further from Geyikbayiri, but from there it’s possible to take an overnight bus to Antalya if you wish to arrive purely by public transport.

Geyikbayiri: too hot, but amazing rock

We got to Geyikbayiri early in October and settled in to the JoSiTo campsite, which was friendly and well-equipped. Despite being “in the mountains” to some degree, the weather was much hotter than we’d experienced in Athens, so it was necessary to climb in the shade. This meant that we only visited the north-facing crag of Trebanna. It’s certainly a great crag and we had plenty to go at, but we’d have liked to have been able to check out some of the other crags too. It also suffers from being the rainy-day and hot-day option, so there’s a fair bit of polish from all the traffic.

I’ve never seen rock like they have in Geyikbayiri. Some places have tufas, but this place has giant columns of rock which you can walk around. It often makes for very three dimensional, pumpy climbing.

The Roctrip arrives

The Petzl Roctrip arrived in Geyikbayiri a few days after us. Immediately the crag became significantly more crowded and hectic. Uber-wads cranking on the sharp end of bright orange Petzl ropes became a common sight!

Up-and-coming hard climbing at Citdibi

One nearby crag that the Roctrip was trying to draw attention to is Citdibi, about a 45 minute drive from Geyikbayiri. This was a welcome change from Trebanna, and an incredibly impressive wall.

Citdibi has a lot going for it. Being much higher in the mountains than Geyikbayiri, it has cooler conditions. The huge wall overhangs quite a bit, so even though it rained pretty hard while we were there, the rock we were climbing was bone dry.

On the downside, it’s a fairly new area so there was still a fair bit of loose rock and dustiness. That’ll clean up in time, it just needs more people to climb there.

The other problem I experienced is that the climbing is really quite hard. All the best-looking lines were 8a and upwards. They did look amazing, but too hard for me to have a casual go. Obviously this “problem” depends on how hard you climb, but I found it a bit frustrating that all the really good lines seemed too hard for me.

There’s loads of potential for development at Citdibi, which I’m sure will happen over the coming years, so if you’re in the area I’d recommend a visit.

Onwards to Olympos

We moved with the Roctrip to the seaside venue of Olympos. It’s a funny place; my understanding is that during high summer it functions as a kind of hippy version of Magaluf. Visitors come in droves for sun, sea, sand and stupid quantities of alcohol. But there is some climbing too, leading to a slightly odd scenario where the tourist businesses try to cater for this secondary and quite different market too.

Initially we stayed in Kadir’s Tree Houses, as this was the chosen location of the Roctrip. This place is presumably so named because it sounds more quaint than “Kadir’s Wooden Shacks With Rusty Nails Poking Out the Walls”. Whereas in Magaluf you can presumably retreat from the nightclub to your lodgings once you’ve had enough (I’ve never actually been), the same cannot be said of Kadir’s. The loud music went on every night until about 3 AM, and because everything is made out of wood there was little respite in our room. Even my earplugs barely helped. Perhaps the loud music can be put down to the “Roctrip effect”, but judging by the reviews on Tripadvisor it’s par for the course here.

The climbing itself was rather good, though not plentiful enough that I’d ever want to return. I did some quality routes on the Cennet sector, which features face-climbing with pockets, a welcome antidote when we were becoming weary of tufas. I intended to try out some other crags including the Deep Water Soloing venue, but…

Then we were poisoned

One night we came back late and they had stopped serving dinner. We asked if they could possibly sort us out and a minute later two plates emerged from the kitchen. Relieved, we devoured our meals.

Several hours later as we lay in bed trying desperately to ignore the throbbing beats of the party, Glyn began to feel sick. Thus began an awful night of puking (for Glyn) and diarrhoea (for us both), and we spent the entire next day bedridden feeling totally weak. When I eventually managed to get up and have a shower, it felt so exhausted that I immediately had to lie down again.

I can’t conclusively draw a link between the food we had and the ensuing illness, but the correlation seems pretty suspicious. We’d had enough, so relocated ourselves to a place called Deep Green Bungalows, which was better in just about every way. It was cleaner and quieter, the food was better and the owner was friendly and eager to help.

Whilst after the second night of resting I began to feel a little better (though not perfect) and did a bit more climbing, Glyn was in bed literally until we left. It was a pretty rubbish end to an otherwise great trip. In the following days I spoke to lots of other people who had either felt ill themselves, or knew someone who was feeling ill; surely not a coincidence.

Back to London

When it was time to leave we were glad to do so. Despite our interesting and involved outbound journey, we’d decided due to time constraints to fly back. It felt like a bit of a cop-out for me, especially as I usually try to avoid flying anywhere, but I suppose the convenience won in this case. That said, arriving in Luton airport at 1 AM with our body clocks on 3 AM did not in any sense feel like a victory.

Food highlights

I don’t want to finish the post on a negative. Overall it was a great trip, despite the ending. So let’s talk about food!

I love sampling different food on climbing trips. Often it’s not the “national dishes” which bring the most pleasure but the simple joys such as eating succulent local oranges in Chulilla, or buying fresh croissants in France. Here are some of the tasty things we ate on this trip.

Glyn’s posts about the trip

• Athens, Great Greek Climbing
• UK to Turkey via Overland Transport (Train + Ferry) Adventure
• Turkey and Petzl Roc Trip

Last Sunday I returned from my first foray into Alpine climbing and mountaineering. I had always assumed that I’d enter this world at some point, but had no particular intentions about when. Earlier in the year the opportunity came up, so I decided that my time had come. Time to (try to) be a gnarly alpinist!

I have lots of reflections about this trip. It was an intense experience with some ups and downs, but I’m glad I did it and I learned a lot.

We hired James Thacker for some guiding at the start, in order to learn some of the skills such as moving together and glacier travel / crevasse rescue that are needed for safe travel in the Alps. I was very impressed by James’ constant attentiveness and his ability to keep a good eye on all of us at the same time. It felt like we were really learning things rather than just being dragged up to a summit, which was important as our aim was to gain skills which we could then use independently later in the trip. James wrote a nice blog post about our time with him.

In the run up to the trip I read Alpine Mountaineering by Bruce Goodlad. This is a great book which gives lots of useful context and advice for a Brit who is looking to go to the Alps for the first time. It is a little more aimed at walkers/scramblers than climbers, but I still found it very helpful. However I was a little upset when the author at one point stated that “with the advent of cheap short-haul flights, a weekend trip to the Alps is a reasonable proposition”, while later in the book he notes that the melting of the glaciers due to climate change is a big and visible problem. I was pretty surprised by the lack of recognition of the connection between these two things.

On that note, travelling to the Alps (in our case Chamonix) by train is very much a reasonable proposition. I did this via a 17:30-ish Eurostar, connecting with a night train from Paris Austerlitz to Saint-Gervais-les-Bains, arriving 8:45 in the morning. This got me much closer to the action than a flight to Geneva which requires an airport transfer. You can take an onward train or bus to get to Chamonix itself for about 9:40.

Unfortunately when I arrived it was raining, and this was very much a constant theme during the trip. From what I hear the weather in the Alps this summer has generally been quite disappointing and this was certainly the case during our visit. When it stopped raining I pitched my tent at Les Arolles (cheap and good facilities – full of climbers), then managed a quick hike from the valley to try to get warmed up.

A couple of days later the four of us had all arrived and we began our guiding with James. Given the generally bad weather we were actually really lucky to have 4 quite reasonable days with him. This was a relief as we obviously didn’t want to have invested in the guiding only the end up standing in the valley getting rained on.

The first day wasn’t looking too good high up so we headed into the Aiguilles Rouges which is the slightly lower altitude range on the other side of the valley from the “big stuff” of the Mont Blanc massif. We did a rock ridge traverse of the Aiguilles de Crouches, which was a good opportunity to learn about moving together on the rope.

The following day the weather perked up so we drove through the tunnel to Courmayeur in Italy and took a lift up to the Torino Hut at about 3,400m. We spent the day mainly learning about glacier travel and crevasse rescue techniques nearby, which was something that had featured high on our list of things to learn about. It was the first time I’d been at such a high altitude and the effects were quite obvious. As soon as I tried to walk at all quickly I’d get very out of breath and start panting heavily. I could feel the lactic acid building extremely quickly.

The next two days we had agreed that we’d go down to a 2:1 ratio with James in order to try to bring together the skills we’d learned on the previous two days. After having spent the night in the valley we again went up to the Torino hut and Khalid and Harriet went off with James to tackle the Aiguille d’Entreves.

This left me and my climbing partner Sadie to go and do something independently. We decided to have a go at a rock route named Lifting du Roi on the Roi de Siam, which James had recommended to us. It was great fun with fantastic views but not particularly challenging climbing. We didn’t actually make it all the way to the top, abseiling down after a very fine corner crack, as we’d run out of time. This was definitely a noticeable theme throughout the trip: to get stuff done you really have to be very fast, which takes some practise!

Eventually we got back near to the Torino Hut by around 7 PM. The other three were all staying the night in the hut, but Sadie and I had decided to have a go at camping on the glacier. It was harder work than just paying for a hut stay, but we learned a lot about the logistics of doing this, and it was quite fun.

The first thing we realised was that we needed some sort of shovel in order to create a flat platform on the snow. Fortunately we managed to borrow one from a friendly Spanish couple who were also camping nearby. When we got into the tent we started to get cold very quickly, and we raced to get our sleeping mats down as fast as possible – turns out tent fabric isn’t a great insulator!

After a tasty meal of pasta, pesto and cheese (mmm, healthy!) we had a poor but not terrible night of sleep. We both kept waking up and I was getting a little creeped out by some of the strange noises outside – despite having probed the area I was having visions of a massive crevasse opening during the night and swallowing us whole. Fortunately this did not happen.

We were up early at 3.30 AM the next morning to pack up the tent and meet James. He then took us on the South East ridge of the Tour Ronde. This was good mixed snow/rock ridge which we climbed moving together in crampons. It was my first experience of climbing rock in crampons but I didn’t find it too bad. On the whole though I felt pretty wasted from the early start and the previous day, so had to try quite hard to keep up. It was fantastic to be on the mountain as the first rays of light were breaching the horizon though, and we topped out by about 8.30 AM.

After this we thanked James and continued the trip on our own. The following day brought a return of the bad weather which was not altogether a problem as it gave us a much-needed rest day. After that, Sadie and I decided to join some other friends, Adam and Bart, on a trip up to the Envers Hut next to the Mer de Glace.

We took the rack-and-pinion train from Chamonix to Montenvers, and then hiked up to the hut. This involves descending some ladders onto the glacier, walking up the glacier, then ascending some more ladders and walking a steep path to the hut. From afar I found the Mer de Glace quite a depressing example of climate change; it’s quite clear the extent to which it has receded, leaving lots of moraine behind. This is reiterated by a sign on the way down which shows the height the glacier used to be in 1820. However up close there is much more ice than can be seen from a distance, since a lot of the ice is covered by rocks and pebbles. Being a “dry” (not snow-covered) glacier the water ice seemed to glow in a fascinating way and the features were clear to see. We crossed lots of streams of water flowing, and occasionally came across moulins, where a stream plummets into a gaping hole down to the depths of the glacier. Needless to say we did not get too close to these!

I found the walk quite tough. I was probably tired, and I also had a sore knee which didn’t help, but we were carrying a lot of weight from our food. (I also had a terrible Grivel bag which made my shoulders sore.) Talking to Adam and Bart I picked up quite a few useful tips to keep food weight down:

• Take a sheet of tin foil rather than a pan lid
• Don’t bother with a kettle, a pan will do
• Instant coffee rather than an aeropress (I might have to work up to this one… but perhaps there’s middle ground in a Turkish style brew where you have no filter and just let the grains settle to the bottom of the cup)
• Dried bananas (or dried fruit generally) – note that “banana chips” are actually deep fried in fat, you want the brown ugly looking ones for the real deal which are dehydrated
• Powdered soup
• Stock cubes = lots of flavour for very little weight
• Don’t bring a glass jar full of pulped tomatoes (we actually did this) – take tomato soup powder instead
• Get rid of as much packaging as possible
• Smash (powdered mash potato)
• Milk powder rather than fresh milk
• General rule: think really hard about anything which has high water content

When we eventually arrived at the hut we went off to do a shorter route very close by, called Le Piège. This was good fun, and Sadie did an impressive lead of the fierce crack climbing at the start (which I fell off on second!) Unfortunately on the last abseil our ropes wouldn’t pull. This lead to me prussiking/climbing up 60m to retrieve them just as it started getting dark. Again we were showing our inexperience, as Adam and Bart pointed out that we should have paid more attention to where the rope was running over the edge at the start of the abseil.

The following day it rained all day so we sat in the hut playing cards and scrabble, reading, and generally going slightly insane. Frustrating.

On the third day it looked better so we set out to tackle our real objective, Guy Anne L’insolite. This was a long and excellent route, and definitely a good challenge. Despite not being as fast as we might have liked (again this comes down to experience and practise) I think we would just about have made it to the top if it had not started raining after the 10th pitch. We started abseiling and the heavens opened. It took several hours and we got soaking wet and very miserable. Our wet ropes seemed to get tangled even more readily than normal and my camera passed away in a puddle of water which accumulated in our bag on the descent. Adam very kindly waited for us at the bottom which was appreciated as we were feeling more than a little sorry for ourselves by the time we got to the ground!

The next morning we needed to return to the valley and it was more of the same. Rain. We tried to leave the hut when it had eased a bit, but it soon un-eased and we proceeded to get wet, again. Coming down the glacier we saw loads of rock fall, and ascending the ladders was actually quite serious as by this point there was – no exaggeration – a waterfall coming down the rock face. Coupled with a very strong wind this persuaded me to concentrate quite hard on holding on!

The forecast for the following day looked dry in the morning with the weather crapping out later on, so in a concerted effort to not get rained on we rose early and took the first lift up to the Plan des Aiguilles for an attempt on Papillons Arete. Unfortunately we misjudged this one as on arrival we could see the rock was gopping wet, and following the unusual conditions for the time of year, there was even a sprinkling of snow at this low altitude. Being North-facing (something we hadn’t considered), it was not going to dry out first thing in the morning. So Sadie and I decided to hike to Montenvers instead, both of us being intensely keen to not get rained on yet again.

It was an enjoyable little hike and we didn’t get wet, but given the €30 lift fee, it felt like a very expensive walk! The cost of everything in Chamonix definitely left a slightly sour taste in our mouths, but you can’t really avoid paying the high lift fees if you want to get stuff done. Perhaps it wouldn’t have felt so bad if we hadn’t felt like we were constantly battling the weather but the cost associated with a trip like this would make me think twice about returning to Chamonix vs finding somewhere cheaper to visit instead. That said, the great think about Chamonix is the amazing granite rock climbing, and the sheer variety of things to do within a relatively small area. So I guess that’s why everyone wants to go there and hence it’s very expensive! (Also there’s a rather big mountain called Mont Blanc in the vicinity…)

At this point Sadie and Adam had had enough, so decided to head off to Orco instead. I had a couple of days left before driving back to the UK with Khalid and Harriet. After a day sitting in the tent in constant rain, it finally looked like our last day would bring some good weather. We decided to head up to the Aiguille du Midi lift station and tackle the mega-classic Cosmiques Arete. I was pleased for the opportunity to get up there as it hadn’t previously happened during the trip, and the Aiguille du Midi is such an iconic starting point for many objectives in Chamonix, so I was keen to see it for myself. I was less pleased to hand over another €55 for the lift pass though!

A temperature inversion meant that the first lift took us from an overcast valley into a beautiful clear mountain morning, and we proceeded down the famous snow arete and round to the start of our route.

The Cosmiques Arete is definitely a good outing, but our enjoyment was crushed by other guided parties on the route. At the first abseil a French guide with too many clients started lowering his clients over the top of us. We responded by making a concerted effort to get well ahead of him, and did so quite easily. Unfortunately we ended up queueing to get through the first tricky section of rock climbing – this time it was a guided party in front of us who were holding up proceedings, which had lead to other parties in front having to wait. All this meant that the French guide eventually caught up with us, and then proceeded to make our experience miserable for the rest of the route. This all culminated in a massive mess of several parties climbing on top of each other towards the end of the route. I got very frustrated and all I could think about was getting out of there. I was no longer enjoying myself and it also made the situation ripe for an accident.

This experience would certainly make me think twice about doing such a popular mountaineering route in the future, at least during a busy time of year. The behaviour of other parties ruined our day and next time I’d rather do something a bit harder or more obscure in order to have some breathing room. Still, we were lucky to get a final day of good weather so I shouldn’t complain too much.

In the end this trip felt like an education in what the Alps are all about. With the weather, expense and busyness there were some ups and downs, but it’s certainly an amazing place to visit, and I hope to go back in years to come. I developed a good sense for how Chamonix works and the geography of its surrounding mountains. I want to go back to Chamonix, but I’d also be keen to consider other Alpine destinations which might be a bit cheaper and quieter in the future.

This post is a little overdue, but I’ve recently had two mini-adventures which have taken me outside my usual comfort zone of bolt clipping.

The first was a trip to Fontainebleau at Easter. I generally only boulder indoors for training, but going to Font for Easter sounded fun and we were lucky with some really good weather apart from on the Monday.

It was only my second trip to Font. On my first we had bad weather for 2 out of 3 of the days, so it felt like my first proper encounter with the famous sandstone boulders. Naturally I had fun falling off lots of things, no matter how “easy” the grade was! But my expectations of myself were low, so I enjoyed simply having a go at stuff without being too concerned about grades.

The best day was probably Sunday, when we decided to try to do as much of the Apremont Centre blue circuit as we could. I got to problem number 31, and definitely felt pretty worked as we walked back to the car!

Unfortunately Colin got a finger injury on the first day and couldn’t climb, but this did mean he took a load of good pictures:

The photos above are all copyright Colin Rouse

More recently I managed to get some climbing in at the UK trad paradise of Pembroke.

This was stage one of my “try to climb more trad this year” plan and I had great fun getting scared trying to put on my trad head.

Adam managed to persuade me to try the notoriously classic and tough Pleasure Dome E3 5c, which resulted in me taking a rather spectacular wanger, certainly my biggest trad fall to date. Fortunately I had placed a bomber nut so I wasn’t in mortal danger, but I have to admit that I came off at least in part because I was scared to commit to the move and hence have to place gear from the next holds! (Still working on that trad head…)

Another very memorable route was the rather esoteric Preposterous Tales E2 5b. It traverses into and through a sea cave and then up through a blowhole. (Which fortunately was not blowing on the day we did it!)

Most of the difficulty on this route comes from route-finding rather than the moves. I spent a long while on pitch two debating with myself where I was supposed to go. I eventually figured it out though.

The holds are probably permanently wet – at least they were when we did it – but they’re big enough that this doesn’t matter too much. We initially attempted a headtorch-free ascent but gave up on that idea pretty quickly!

It was great to get back into a bit of trad climbing, and it was my first time in Pembroke. I was suitably impressed and will be returning!

I’ve just returned from a trip to Valencian climbing destination Chulilla. It’s not somewhere I had heard of six months ago, and certainly isn’t one of the big sport climbing areas that you often hear of people heading to. But when I was chatting to my friend Glyn some months ago he proposed it, and the climbing looked good, so we set the wheels in motion.

More recently it seems like Chulilla has been getting a bit of attention from the UK climbing community, and deservedly so in my opinion as it has some fantastic climbing. However there is still a lack of good information on the internet (at least in English) so this blog post will also function as a mini-guide giving some tips to those who are thinking of planning a trip.

Chulilla is a small town situated at around 400m, about 1 hour’s drive from the coastal Spanish city of Valencia. It hosts a vast, orange-coloured limestone gorge, much of which is bolted.

The walls of the gorge are roughly 70m high, but not many of the routes go all the way to the top. That said, many of the routes we climbed were super-long stamina fests; an 80 metre rope is essential, as few lines are equipped with intermediate lower-offs for those on shorter ropes.

We stayed in the climber’s refuge El Altico, run by local climbers Pedro and Nuria. Pedro has been responsible for a lot of the bolting so he’s great to chat to about routes. The refuge overlooks the gorge and provides bedding and an equipped kitchen with a gas hob and fridge. If you’re feeling flush or lazy Pedro and Nuria will also serve you meals. I was lucky to have my birthday during the trip, so on that evening we gave ourselves the full-board treatment and enjoyed a tasty Valencian rice dish.

There are other eating options in the town, although be aware that quite a few places are only open on weekends. On our last night we enjoyed a very tasty meal at Hostal El Pozo.

One more thing on the subject of food: the locally-grown oranges are really fucking tasty. A big step beyond what you can get in the UK. We ate a lots – I think the best ones came from the tobacconist in the square.

From the refuge it’s possible to walk to all of the good climbing, although having a car in our group was pretty useful for getting in/out of the village, supermarket runs, etc. A car will also reduce your walk-in time for some of the crags. There are also some other crags (not in the gorge) with routes in the low 6es which were visited by some of our group and require a car.

Chulilla has a lot to offer in the mid to high 7s. There were two areas we found ourselves going back to again and again. The first is Pared de la Enfrente which is directly opposite the refuge (although it takes a little time to get down to as the refuge sits on top of the cliff). The second is the El Embalse area which includes El Oasis, El Balconcito and others; this is a bit further away around a bend in the river, but it’s where we spent the most time and is absolutely worth the effort to go to.

I wouldn’t say that there is a definitive style to the climbs in Chulilla; there is quite a lot of variation other than the fact that most routes are pretty long (often 30 to 40 metres). You’ll find both steep tufa climbing and delicate crimping – sometimes even on the same route!

We found that the grading was often a bit soft compared to other areas we’ve been to, but this could be in part due to the length of the routes. But there were quite a few routes where we disagreed with the grade reported in the guidebook.

Some highlights for me were:

La Diagonal 6c

This is an obvious diagonal crack which goes to the top of the gorge. In the guidebook it is 2 pitches of 6c + 7a, but we didn’t think the second pitch was significantly harder than the first. We climbed it as an epic 70m single pitch (massive rope drag by the end) but you can’t abseil off without ending up hanging out from the wall. So Glyn had to climb it again on second to strip the draws. We then topped out and tried to walk down by going left. This resulted in us getting pretty dehydrated whacking our way through dense bushes for a few kilometres but we eventually found a way to scramble/walk back down into the gorge. We later realised it would have been better to abseil down Orgasmatrón which is a multi-pitch 5+ just a few routes to the right. I don’t recommend our descent strategy, but our mini-epic is part of the reason that I won’t forget this route!

El remanso de las mulas L1 7c+

My first of the grade, this is a long route with some technical/hard moves up to a decent knee bar rest, then a sustained crux of tufa pinching up to a good jug with feet which aren’t as good as you’d like. Then a bunch more tufa climbing which isn’t hard except when you’re pumped out of your brains – which you are by this point! (I was, at least…)

On my first go, by some miracle, I almost managed the onsight. It was one of those rare situations where I was somehow able to squeeze out every last ounce of effort from myself and try really really hard. When I finally fell off just a couple of bolts from the end I felt as if I might be sick! Despite my initial near-success, actually getting the redpoint took a while and became a bit frustrating as I kept falling off the lower section which I had onsighted. In the end I got it on my last go of the second day trying, having accepted that I’d leave the clips in and try again after a rest day – I think this allowed me to relax enough to actually do it.

Moon safari 7c

I was pretty pleased to manage to flash this great route. It starts off hard, then there is quite a bit of easier but sustained tufa climbing, then a fewer hard moves near the top which I somehow managed to battle through.

Tequila sunrise 7c+

My best redpoint and most enjoyable route of the trip. I had great fun working this route, and when I did it I felt great, having just had a rest day I was fresh and everything seemed to flow really nicely. I find it super satisfying when I manage to get a redpoint by climbing well rather than just scraping through. It gets 7c+/8a in the guidebook, but I definitely don’t want my first 8a to be a soft one! I think 7c+ is fair.

Nivelúgalos 7c

A fast redpoint on the day I ticked Tequila sunrise, this route had some great moves including a memorable heel hook as you move from one undercut to another.

Finally, a bit about the journey. You can of course do the predictable thing and fly to Valencia, but we took the train for a better adventure and lower carbon footprint (booked through my company Loco2 of course).

On the way out I travelled with Glyn via the uber-scenic Latour de Carol route. This consisted of a sleeper train to Toulouse (although you can get one direct to Latour de Carol for a quicker journey), and then a local train up through the Pyrenees the following morning. We soaked up the mountain scenery and upon arrival at Latour de Carol I managed to muster up enough Spanish to ask the café owner if we could leave our bags in order to go on a little walk. We went a kilometre or so to the border and then returned to reward ourselves with beer and a bite of chorizo! Another local train took us down to Barcelona where we got a connecting service to Valencia.

On the way back we were both joined by our girlfriends. We travelled to Barcelona on the Saturday arriving mid afternoon and spent a night in the city. The highlight was definitely having pinchos at the lively Gasterea bar. It’s the first time I’ve been to a “proper” tapas/pinchos place where you literally sit at the bar and iteratively pick out small snacks while getting steadily more intoxicated. (As opposed to “restaurant” tapas where you sit at a table, order once, and are waited on.) It’s a great way to eat; we experienced loads of different tasty morsels in a single evening and the place was positively buzzing. The following morning we took a high-speed TGV service direct to Paris (also fairly scenic as it turns out), and then the Eurostar got us back to St Pancras by 7.40 PM.

I’m writing this while once again hurtling along at ~300km/h aboard a high-speed train. This particular one is an AVE from Madrid to Marseille, one of the new cross-border high speed routes linking France and Spain. Having just left Madrid I am taking in the wintry Spanish landscape, and in a few hours I’ll get off at Perpignan to connect with an Intercities de Nuite night train which will bring me (while I sleep) to Paris early tomorrow morning. Then it’s just a quick hop on the Eurostar and I’ll be home in time for elevenses. (No, I don’t actually observe elevenses… but it sounds suitably British)

The trip started near Tarragona, where I joined up with Chris Jorde who I met back in September in Rodellar. After finishing his studies in Barcelona, Chris has been climbing solidly since I last met him, and needless to say he was in good shape for it! Fortunately for me, he invited me to come stay at his rented apartment in Cornudella de Montsant and I happily obliged. He also had a fellow Brit staying, Rachel Slater, who was similarly good company and an excellent climber.

To be perfectly honest, I didn’t find the start of the trip totally easy. On both trips I did last year (south France and Rodellar), I had clear goals grade-wise. I had to work for them but they were quite achievable. This resulted in me going from a 7a redpointer at the start of the year to a 7c redpointer at the end. Obviously that’s great and I wanted to continue the upward march so I had my sights on 7c+ this time.

But there were several problems.

For a start, such rapid progress obviously cannot continue forever. If it did, we could say that I’ll probably be climbing 9a in 2015 – something tells me that’s unlikely! In reality I think that while I did make a lot of real improvement in my climbing and strength in 2013, I was also in a situation at the start of the year where my redpoint grade did not reflect my actual ability. So it was fairly easy to just try harder climbs and achieve them.

The second “problem” was that we were going to different crags day by day. Actually this was quite nice, as I experienced a lot of different climbing areas in one trip: Siurana, Terradets, Montsant, Margalef, Masriudoms. A grand tour of Catalan climbing. But it obviously made it difficult to really sink my teeth into a hard project which might take days to complete.

Thirdly, I was out of shape. Actually I thought I made quite a concerted effort to prepare in advance of the trip. I did lots of route climbing indoors and felt like I was performing well. But as soon as I arrived on the rock it was clear that my endurance was just not good enough. And the problem was not only endurance – I hadn’t climbed on real rock since early December and my technique was a bit rusty. Rock is a much more subtle medium than plastic, so it’s unsurprising that this slipped a bit through many weeks of only climbing indoors.

I think my main error was that I didn’t realise and accept these facts quickly enough. I tried one 7c+ (Orient) at Terradets over two days at the start of the trip but failed to get it. Actually on my final attempt I climbed through the crux but just got so pumped I could no longer hold on and finish it. But after that I still kept trying things that were at the top of my grade range and failing at them. This made me frustrated.

By the end of the trip the situation improved. I had definitely gained some endurance and technique and the ticks were coming more easily. We went back to some of the places we had previously visited which allowed me to finish off some business. In the end I ticked a soft 7c and three 7b+ routes within the last 3 days I had. It’s actually not something I am at all unhappy with when I think back to how hard I had to work for my first 7b+ last May. I reckon that if I’d have gone back to Tarradets after a rest day at the end of my time I could have done Orient as ultimately the main reason I failed was endurance.

So, it was a definite learning experience:

• 1.5 weeks feels a bit short for a productive climbing trip to me. I felt that it took a week to feel “on form” and then I knew I was about to leave imminently.
• If moving around a lot, don’t bother with hard redpoints. Concentrate on onsighting, gaining technique and enjoying the climbing. Especially if endurance/technique are not where they could be. If I could do it all again I’d do onsights/flashes at max 7b for the first week of the trip, and only tried harder things after that.
• Don’t try to progress too fast. Enjoy climbing at your current grade. I still think I can do a 7c+, but I also have much to gain by consolidating my current grade and there is joy in that too.
• Endurance. I still haven’t figured out a great way to train endurance indoors in preparation for a trip like this. But it’s clear that lapping 12m 7a’s on plastic isn’t cutting it. For the next trip I’m thinking to try long boulder circuits on steep terrain with a bit of weight added. Any tips gratefully received!

After I parted ways with Chris and Rachel I had another little adventure before returning home. I took a train to Madrid where I met up with Iago and Juan who I know from The Castle, and Iago’s friend Dani who lives in Madrid. The next morning we all set out at ridiculous o’clock to do an ice climbing course in Sierra de Gredos. I was pleased to have this opportunity as I spent last winter gaining winter mountaineering skills with the objective of then progressing on to winter/ice climbing.

Iago had promised me crisp neve and Spanish sun, but we were actually greeted by rather more Scottish conditions at first! Our trek up to the hut at around 2000m featured very poor visibility and gale force winds. Nonetheless it was character-building!

Fortunately the conditions improved once we reached the hut, which sits in the “Circo de Gredos”, a circle of peaks which provide some shelter. So over the following days we learned about how to move on ice, place screws, make anchors from ice axes and more.

Winter mountain activity for me is something completely different to rock climbing. Maybe my attitude will change in the future, but at the moment I’m not aiming to climb hard stuff or difficult mountains. I just really like being in the mountains and snow. It’s a unique and refreshing environment to experience from time to time. I look forward to honing these skills in winters to come!

Beware that this post contains some beta about routes in Rodellar.

Towards the end of August I embarked upon my biggest climbing trip yet. Actually, that’s not technically correct: I embarked on what was initially supposed to be a “normal” holiday with my girlfriend Emily and some other friends. We planned to stay a week or so in Castelldefels, a beach town near Barcelona.

Some time after booking the holiday, I found out that some friends were going deep water soloing in Mallorca, just a couple of days after I was due to leave Spain. Mallorca is pretty close to Barcelona, isn’t it? It would be rude not to, I thought.

But the Mallorca excursion would only be four days, and if I was going to lose money re-arranging my return travel, I figured I ought to make it count. So I decided that after Mallorca I would head to the sport climbing mecca of Rodellar for 3 weeks.

I use low-carbon forms of transport as much as possible, and so our route to Barcelona involved a late-afternoon Eurostar to Paris, where we had a bite to eat and then boarded the Elipsos “Train Hotel” sleeper train at around 11 PM. The Elipsos is probably the nicest sleeper train I’ve been on, the couchettes have 4 rather than 6 berths, making them comparatively roomy, and the on-board bar-buffet is well stocked and pleasant. They have a proper selection of French and Spanish wines, and the drinks are pretty reasonably priced compared to a lot of trains I’ve been on.

The “holiday” portion of my trip was annoyingly stormy for most of the week. This caused problems when Emily and I decided to do a day trip to Montserrat, with the intention of getting ourselves up an easy multi-pitch route. In fairness the plan was a disaster in a multitude of ways – we left a bit late, got completely lost and nearly ran out of petrol (due to the hire company’s ridiculous “return with an empty tank” policy) all before we even started our approach. After we finally parked up and started walking to the climb, a storm came over and made us very wet.

But we were by this point pretty psyched and hopelessly optimistic, so we carried on. The approach took much longer and was far more adventurous than expected, so when we finally arrived at the base of the climb it was about 6 PM. I looked up at the sopping rock and came to the conclusion that I already knew was inevitable: yes, it really would be a bad idea to start a 3 pitch, soaking wet route with just 2 hours to go before dark. We turned around and walked back, less disappointed than you might think as we had both enjoyed the scramble through the woods together as much as we might have enjoyed actually doing a climb.

When our holiday came to an end, I parted ways with Emily and stayed for a night with a friend who lives in Barcelona. I caught up on some work from his house and boarded a ferry to Palma de Mallorca the following evening.

It’s more expensive to book a cabin on the ferry, and even if I had wanted to, they were all booked up. So my sleep was supposed to be facilitated by the “comfort” of a reclining seat. However after I boarded, I bumped into a couple of other lone travellers on the deck and after sharing some beers we rolled out our mats and sleeping bags on the sun loungers on the deck. The sea air was warm and this was a much more comfortable bed than any reclining seat, except than at around 6 AM it suddenly got very windy which forced a retreat below deck. But the ferry docked at 7 so this didn’t matter much.

I spent the following day working in a cafe, before meeting my climbing buddies at the airport for the drive to Porto Cristo on the other side of the island.

Cova del Diablo is the biggest and best DWS crag in Mallorca, located just outside Porto Cristo. This is where we headed for our first day. I wasn’t very happy with my climbing here, which I put down to a variety of factors. For a start I hadn’t done any climbing during my holiday, and before that I’d had an injured arm which had impeded training. Secondly I’d neglected to cut my toe nails, which made my climbing shoes really painful. But finally I’ll be honest and say that I was scared. Diablo is a pretty big and intimidating crag at 22m high, and I just wasn’t feeling too comfortable with falling off from high up.

The following day was much better. We headed to a different crag called Cala Barques, which is very picturesque. From the parking you walk through some countryside for about 20 minutes and arrive at a beautiful beach. Just along from the beach is an impressive cave with lots of stalactites and other cool features. Further along there are more climbs around some archways in the cliff.

I decided to tackle my fear of falling head on, so spent the first hour or two just repeatedly jumping into the water from gradually higher heights. This worked well and meant that I could climb much more comfortably, fully committing to the moves and taking a number of reasonably big falls. I didn’t really get up anything that day, but I tried quite a few routes and felt good about it. The following day I returned and ticked a few things: Big XXL 7a, Tranversal 7a and Bisexual 7a. On the latter I ended up desperately campusing the final moves and pulling through by the skin of my teeth – not the best technique but a crowd pleaser!

On the fourth and final day it was unfortunately very wet. Undeterred the team decided to head to Cala Barques once more, but really it was very hard to do any useful climbing as the rock was incredibly greasy. I fell off The Might of the Stalactite 7a twice and gave up.

That evening we returned to Palma de Mallorca. My friends got their flights back to the UK and I got back on a ferry to Barcelona. It was a great opportunity to experience the Mallorca DWS that I’d heard so much about, and I would certainly like to return for a longer trip at some point. There are a huge number of brilliant looking lines at Cova del Diablo, so I certainly have more to try there.

Next morning I arrived in Barcelona. I took a high-speed Alvia train to Zaragoza, where I got on a local train to Huesca, which is the nearest train station to Rodellar. The high-speed trains in Spain are some of the best in Europe – roomy and comfortable even in standard (“Turista”) class, and there was even a movie being played (which I couldn’t watch because it was dubbed and subtitled into Spanish).

From Huesca I had decided to try to hitch to Rodellar as a taxi costs about €70. This involved walking through the town, full of regret that I had put so many unnecessary things in my heavy bag. Eventually I got onto the right road exiting the town, and set about trying to thumb a ride.

It wasn’t easy, but I managed eventually. I was almost ready to give up and call a taxi when I managed to get a lift to the village at the start of the long windy road up to Rodellar. From there I figured I’d be waiting some time as there was very little traffic, but not 10 minutes later I was picked up by Doke, a Spanish climber who worked in the kitchen at the climber’s refuge, Kalandraka. I finally arrived in Rodellar around 7 PM, feeling excited and quite relieved that I would be staying in one place for a few weeks!

Initially I stayed at the Mascun campsite, however it quickly became clear to me that the social hub for climbers is Kalandraka. On the first few nights I had the dilemma of whether to stay around Kalandraka to socialise, or go back to the campsite to cook. So after my 3rd night I just moved to Kalandraka, where you can stay in a dormitory for €8.50 per night (which is actually €2 cheaper than the camping).

Kalandraka is a fantastic place. It’s clean, modern and totally geared towards climbers. All the staff are climbers and it just feels like living in a community of like-minded individuals. There’s free internet and electricity, which enabled me to do work on my rest days. For entertainment you have a slackline, pool table and ping-pong. If you want to chill out, there are bean bags on the decking which overlooks the valley. On Wednesdays they serve huge, delicious burgers with bacon, onion, gherkins and a side of salad and roast potatoes, all for €8.50. If you’re still hungry you could try a “slice” of cake, literally the biggest slices I’ve ever seen. You don’t have to buy meals of course – there’s a communal kitchen for guests to cook in too (but note that you need to bring your own stove).

The climbing area is also very pleasant. It sometimes seems like a giant edible garden – there’s rosemary, thyme and blackberries everywhere. If you keep your eyes open you can also find figs, grapes, mint, oregano, lemon-grass and lavender.

The weather was extremely good right until the end of my stay, with basically every day being clear and sunny. In September it’s too hot to climb in direct sunlight, but there are crags on both sides of the valley so it’s typical to start on the east side and then cross the river later in the day. In the evening it does get cold, which made a welcome change from the perpetual heat of Barcelona and Mallorca.

Groceries can be purchased from the shop at the Mascun campsite, but it’s quite expensive so if you get to Barbastro or Huesca it’s worth stocking up. The shop is perfectly adequate though (if a little lacking in fresh produce), so you certainly won’t go hungry if you can’t or don’t want to leave Rodellar.

At the start I was shown around by Jerome Mowat, who I knew from London and who happened to be in Rodellar at the same time as me. This was a great way to quickly get an understanding of the place, and my initial goal was to try to climb lots of routes and get fitter.

On my first day I did my first 7a onsight, the 38 metre long epic Fanthkes o panthere. This felt like an achievement at the time, but by the end of the trip I had done so many 7a and 7a+ onsights that I came to take them for granted. I think onsighting this grade in Rodellar is definitely easier for me than in the UK as everything is chalked up and there is often no real crux on a route. So if you have enough stamina and can keep it together you’re set.

After the first two days warm-up and a rest day I started on my first project. I was climbing with a guy from Dorset called Trev, and he was trying a 7b+ called Aquest any sí (Catalan for “this year yes”) at the crag with the same name. (A very nice place right next to the river, which gets shade from about 11 AM.) So I had a go and I’m glad I did because it’s a sustained 25m of brilliant climbing with the crux right at the top (powerful moves while pumped – yay!) It took me 3 sessions to tick the route but it was so good that I almost didn’t mind that I kept falling.

However the real goal I had in mind for my trip was to get my first 7c, so I turned my attention to this next. I’d heard that Nanuk in the Gran Boveda (“Great Vault”) was a worthwhile line so set about working on it.

The first attempt came at the end of two days of climbing and didn’t go well. I was shattered and didn’t even make it to the chain. I sacked it in and decided to come back on a different day for a better attempt.

Nanuk has everything: you start off with some slab climbing and come to a ledge where you can rest (but if you’re pumped here then you’re doing it wrong). You then chimney up between some massive tufas, get set and blast through some pumpy moves up an overhanging section to a small cave where you can get a good knee-bar rest. Try to recover as much as possible because the next few moves are difficult and bouldery, involving a reachy pop to a sloper over the lip of the roof, followed by some powerful moves to pull up and over to reach a tufa jug where you finally clip the chain – epic!

On my first proper day working it I managed to get to the finishing moves, but I was absolutely spent and had no chance of succeeding on the boulder problem. I knew I needed to get the climbing up to there as efficient as possible, so on my next day I went bolt to bolt really trying to work out as much beta as possible.

It paid off. On the following attempt I reached the cave knee bar and felt relatively fresh. As I hung around shaking out I knew I could get it on this attempt if I just kept myself together and stayed in control. The first couple of moves after the rest felt like a struggle but I managed to regain composure and stick the sloper. I battled over the lip and finally clipped the chain with relief and elation – I’d got what I came for! Beers were drunk that night.

So, what next? Well I was chatting to Doke (the guy who picked me up when hitching) one day and he pointed out a new route at El Vaso, called Tope Gama. As we talked a bit more he told me that he’d bolted it himself. It was 7c he said, but a hard one. Some say 7c+. I really liked the personal connection with this route, so was keen to have a go, but after several attempts I gave up. I could do all the moves but I found myself a long way from being able to actually climb it – the route takes a very overhanging line up the roof, featuring big moves between decent holds. I found myself getting completely pumped after just a few moves, and while I could envisage doing it with enough training, it didn’t feel like a realistic prospect for this trip. It definitely felt a lot harder than Nanuk.

The next day I found myself trying something a bit easier, Pince sans rire 7b+ (French for “pinch without laughter”, meaning a dry humour) at the crag with the same name. This is an absolutely inspiring line – after some easy climbing through the first few clips you get sustained, slightly overhanging tufa climbing for the rest of its 30m length, with one good rest about two thirds of the way up.

On my first try it felt hard but doable, and I was keen to redpoint it for two reasons: one was that it was just such a good, long line, and the other was that it required efficient tufa climbing, something that I don’t have a lot of experience of from climbing in the UK. I do like to work on my weaknesses so this was an attraction for me.

After a rest day I came back to the crag with American climber Chris Jorde who had recently arrived in Rodellar. We found the line quite busy and despite my British qualities I didn’t fancy queueing, so I did some other climbs meanwhile. Which is actually a good thing because I decided to try the climb to the left, María Ponte el Arnés 7b+, and was super happy when I managed to get the onsight! The general opinion seems to be that it’s on the easy end of 7b+, but even so it’s a great achievement for me. The route has better rests and is less sustained than Pince sans rire, but with some harder moves, and I definitely think it’s equally good.

Later that day I tried the very long and enjoyable Far Faders West 7a+, but fell off at the top. Finally Pince sans rire became free, so I hopped on and managed to tick it. A great day all round.

Having put Pince sans rire to rest, I was keen to try another 7c. There were two at Gran Boveda which looked interesting. The first was Maroskum, which started off nicely enough, but was incredibly thin, crimpy and hard at the top, featuring what appeared to be a decidedly manufactured two finger pocket. I nearly failed to even reach the top and was ready to leave a “bail biner” on the bolt, but some encouragement from my belayer Nico finally got me to the chain. I stripped it.

The second route I tried went much better. In fading light I hauled myself up L’any que ve tambe (Catalan for “next year also”, the companion to Aquest any sí) with many rests on the rope. I felt tired and drained, but it was evident to me that this was a fantastic route, featuring mainly tufa climbing but with a more vertical bouldery section at the top.

After my rest day I returned with Chris, but in the morning we warmed up at La Palomera which is worth a brief digression…

I planned to get on a 7a called O3. When we arrived some French guys were climbing it so we did another route first. We then got ready for O3 and asked the French guys which line it was, from which we understood that it was the right hand line of bolts. I’d looked at the guidebook and seen that there were 7 bolts, so I put 8 draws on my harness and off I went. After I clipped the first Chris looked up at the soaring line and expressed doubt that 8 draws would be enough. He had a point: we could count 6 bolts from the ground and that got us halfway up the wall, which would be an odd place to put the lower-off.

So Chris got me some more draws and I carried on. After some fantastic technical face climbing I reached a jug beneath a small roof. I peeked up and could see 2 bolts. I couldn’t see the lower-off. I looked at my harness and could see 1 remaining draw, despite the extras that Chris persuaded me to take. Oops.

I wasn’t sure if the lower-off had an in-situ clip, and not wanting to compromise my onsight attempt I decided I had no choice but to run it out. After some hesitation I committed to the move, pulling over the lip of the roof, and very gingerly climbing past one bolt, then another and finally arriving at the chain feeling relieved – I would have been in for at least a 10 metre whipper! Fortunately the climbing after the roof was not too difficult, so it was mainly a head game.

Back on the ground, we realised that the climb was in fact Cárcel racional, the route just right on O3. The guidebook grade is an absurd 7b/+, but both Chris and I agreed that we wouldn’t give it more than 7a. So despite the drama this was a happy accident – we wouldn’t have picked a 7b/+ as a warm-up, but we both found it to be a superb route and were glad to have accidentally climbed it. For what it’s worth, it does seem like a lot of the lines at La Palomera are over-graded.

So after this adventure we headed to the Gran Boveda, and I was pleased to get L’any que ve tambe on my 2nd attempt of the day (3rd total). Chris did a fast redpoint of Les Cadres Regenerent 8a, and then flashed L’any que ve tambe.

As we pondered what to do the following day, Chris suggested that we could head to a crag called La Piscineta. La Piscineta is not a popular crag for two reasons: the climbs are quite hard, and compared to most of the crags in Rodellar it’s a long way from the town, involving an hour’s hike up out of the Mascun valley and down into the Alcanadre valley (so you have a hill to climb in both directions).

But if you can climb hard enough and are willing to endure the walk in, you will be rewarded. I felt like I’d done everything I wanted to do for the trip, so I was up for the adventure even though there was only one route that I’d realistically be able to try there. I was curious to see the crag I’d heard people say was so amazing, and keen to just get out to somewhere a bit new and different after becoming quite familiar with the Mascun valley in the preceding 3 weeks.

La Piscineta did not disappoint. We waded across the river and probably the best looking crag I’ve ever seen came into view. At its base was an immaculate turquoise pool with fish lazily swimming around, occasionally nibbling at the surface or chasing each other. Out of the river rose a gigantic 45 metre roof of tufas and jugs. Across the valley there must have been at least 20 huge eagles gliding in circles around the rocky peak. We both got extremely psyched.

Climbing wise the day was not a great success, but neither of us minded. We hadn’t come here just to collect yet another tick. Chris tried Pieds nus dans la terre sacrée 8a (“Barefoot in the holy land”) and I tried Pim pam plouf 7b+. On my second attempt I got through the crux into a knee-bar, but when I came to re-adjust my foothold broke and ejected me. On the next attempt I came within two clips from the chain but completely ran out of juice. Chris made 4 attempts on his route but was similarly burned out by the last. We packed up our gear and had an invigoratingly icy dip in the pool before starting the hike back.

La Piscineta is definitely somewhere I would like to return – the day really motivated me to get stronger and come back at some future point when I can try more of the routes there!

And so after a few more days my trip drew to a close. It was the first time I had been on a climbing trip on my own which I was somewhat apprehensive about beforehand. But it definitely worked out thanks to the social scene at Kalandraka and the fact that most of the climbing in Rodellar is contained within a relatively small area. I met and climbed with lots of amazing people from all over the world. I did have to be a bit more self-sufficient and proactive than I might have been if I hadn’t come alone, but all in all it worked out for me.

My plan for the return journey was a bit different to the outbound journey. On reflection I didn’t think the train was the best way to get to Rodellar from Barcelona. It turns out there is a coach service which runs from Barcelona Sants station to Barbastro, which is a bit closer than Huesca and doesn’t involve the change at Zaragoza. (It can also be a bit cheaper.)

So I intended to get the bus back from Barbastro to Barcelona. When I was booking my travel the Elipsos night train from Barcelona to Paris was unfortunately not yet on sale, and I wanted to get my travel sorted so I opted to book a night train from the French border town of  Cerbère. This meant that I’d need to take a regional train from Barcelona to meet the night train.

However, as luck would have it, a Polish couple I’d made friends with, Agnies and Wojciech, were driving to Girona Airport that day, and my regional train stopped at a station very close by. So I was fortunately able to skip out the faff of going to Barbastro and Barcelona.

When I got to Cerbère I had a couple of hours to wait, so I sat reading a book. At some point I noticed a man nonchalantly wander over and sit beside me, but didn’t take any notice as I was engrossed. Then he made an offhand comment which I don’t remember, so I turned to look at him and realised it was my friend Danny from back in the UK! I nearly jumped out of my skin! Danny was returning with his partner Jess from their holiday in Sitges, so it was great to have some unexpected company that night and the following morning. These sorts of experiences (with strangers or otherwise) are one of the reasons that I love train travel.

So that’s it. I’m now back in London wondering where the next trip will take me and who I will meet. Certainly I will return to Rodellar at some point, perhaps the same time next year!

In case you hadn’t noticed, in these past few weeks we’ve been getting an unusual amount of sunshine here in the UK. So when Glyn invited me to join him down in Dorset for some Deep Water Soloing at the start of July I was pretty psyched.

Before this I’d been on two DWS excursions, the most recent of which was nearly 2 years ago. The first consisted of me flashing the classic Freeborn Man, and the second consisted of me falling off it repeatedly. Doh.

So I definitely felt like I had unfinished business to be seen to, and honestly I felt a little apprehensive despite the 6c grade being well within my ability.

I took the Friday off work and we started with Lulworth. I also had unfinished business here, having previously struggled on Horny Lil’ Devil. I tried it again and fell off, then nearly got very hurt when a loose block came off in my hand while traversing above the crag with a backpack on. Not a great start, but I did somehow produce a flash of Animal Magnetism which was pretty satisfying.

The next day we headed to Connor Cove and I successfully got up Freeborn Man on the first attempt. Phew! I didn’t realise it at the time, but Glyn was videoing me. I don’t look as smooth as I’d like!

After this Glyn had to take off, but I’d arranged to link up with Adam Brown & co, who Ross McKerchar put me in touch with. I had fun onsighting a few easier lines, and we finished the day with a lovely BBQ on the cliff top.

The following day it was back to Lulworth. I finally made some progress on Horny Lil’ Devil and eventually did it on my 4th attempt that day – hooray!

This last weekend I once again returned, with Adam Brown, Rachel Keys and James O’Neil. James is a strong boulderer but rarely sport climbs and had never done DWS. However he totally pulled it out the bag with an assortment of impressive flashes over the course of the weekend.

For my part, I managed a flash of Crazy Notion and an onsight of Davey Jones’ Lock-off. The latter was utterly incredible, probably the best DWS I’ve done. It took me at least 20 minutes to complete, with plenty of shaking out and great moves.

Another highlight was The Laws Traverse, which is not too hard (though not too easy either!) but I found it super fun, especially as there was a group of about 8 of us on the send-train!

Finally, here’s an action sequence captured by James, of Adam Brown coming off Herman Borg’s Basic Pulley Slippage – entertaining!

This September I have plans to be in Mallorca for 4 days, where I will surely return to the joys of Deep Water Soloing!