As we didn’t have time to climb El Dorado yesterday we had another chilled out start this morning with the aim of climbing El Dorado in the afternoon. To warm up we headed to the main cliffs of Sierra de Toix for a few sport routes in the morning. El Dorado is an impressive line up a striking cliff face above the sea below Sierra de Toix. The first pitch is an exposed traverse onto a ledge below the main groove line, while the climbing was never hard it was pretty serious due to a lack of bolts or natural gear. The main pitches then follow a huge groove line up the cliff, from the bottom this looks incredibly intimidating as it is incredibly steep. The climbing up the main pitch was absolutely fantastic, it is now also fully equipped with good bolts so it was just a case of enjoying the outstanding climbing. The route was impressively steep, but generally the holds were excellent so it was often possible to get the weight off your arms. This just lead to a brilliant atmospheric pitch, from the hanging belay towards. Read the full article…

After a mountaineering day out yesterday it was back to rock climbing today. We had planned on climbing the classic El Dorado in the afternoon and something else in the morning. After a very leisurely start which involved eating breakfast in the sun, we decided to head for Magical Mystery Tour which is described as a classic expedition in the guidebook. The guidebook says that the route requires trad gear and is HVS 5a in UK grades, but it is now fully bolted and is certainly not HVS and I am not sure where the 5a the guidebook referred to was. If you aren’t confident climbing f5 then a set of wires may not be a bad idea for the final pitch. The start of the route was an superb 40m free hanging abseil which was very atmospheric. The first few pitches were very easy and thankfully a slower party in front of us kindly let us past them on these pitches. The main pitches of the route involved excellent climbing with lots of exposed traversing and enjoyable climbing. The climbing was never hard, but the atmosphere of the route was. Read the full article…

Staying near Calpe the obvious climb to do is up the Penon de Ifach which is a surprisingly large mountain which overlooks Calpe. We chose to climb the top 50 5+ of Diedro UBSA which is a 9 pitch route which is mostly equipped with bolts. Walking under the face in the morning was very impressive, as we walked around the harbour path the cliff was towering impressively above us, our line was an obvious groove line up the middle of the face.   The first pitch was amazingly chossy, but thankfully this did not continue! The rock quality immediately improved on the second pitch, unfortunately the awful rock was replaced by polish! After the polish on the first few moves the rest of the pitch was fantastic, but it felt much harder than the given grade. The third pitch was incredibly polished for the first few moves which made it feel very tenuous before the thrutch up the chimney after the polish. Thankfully the polish vanished after this pitch and just left fantastic rock and excellent climbing. The next pitch was an excellent sustained corner climb with brilliant gear and excellent. Read the full article…

Unfortunately we didn’t arrive in the Costa Blanca to be greeted by the expected sunshine, instead we arrived to a slightly damp day. We bailed on Sella due to heavy rain and instead we managed to climb a short multi pitch sport route and another uninspiring single pitch route at Sierra de Toix. Thankfully the second morning was significantly better and we woke up to a cloudless sky. We decided to head to the impressive Mascarat gorge to climb a classic multi pitch pseudo-sport route called Llobet/Bertomeu. The guidebook said that you needed to take a small rack and graded it at HVS, it turns out that a small rack really meant a single set of nuts and a few cams as the climb was fairly well bolted for the most part. Walking up the gorge in the morning was impressive with the steep walls of the gorge towering above you with the spectacular bridges high above. After a bit of a slog up to the road level we were soon on the old bridge and at the start of our climb. As you start off a bridge it is a. Read the full article…