TEAM BLOG
Midsummer Limestone in the Pyrenees
July 26, 2010 at 3:20 pm | Dave Pickford | No comment
Northeast Spain has arguably more world class sport climbing than any other region on the planet, and includes many of Europe’s finest crags. With the prospect of a whole month to spend climbing in the region, my objectives were quietly ambitious, and my schedule refreshingly relaxed. At Siuarana, after warming back into the unique style of Catalan edge-crushing with a quick redpoint of Cop de Cigaro (8a+) at L’Olla, I turned my attention to what for me is the proudest line on the area’s most awesome wall: the soaring blunt arête of Dogma (8b+) at El Pati.
Climbing with my friend Adrian Baxter is often a humbling experience, due to the sheer speed and ferocity with which he crushes hard routes. Having just redpointed the awesome arcing line of Megrana Profundo (8b+) in super-fast time, I knew he’d send the much longer but less intense Dogma pretty quickly. Sure enough, he dispatched it the following day, having not even worked the final, sting-in-the-tail overhanging finger crack at 45 metres. Aid’s amazing performance in sending this massive line on his first redpoint, and onsighting the final crux of the route, must have inspired me – I managed to get it done the following day.
I’m naturally an endurance climber, and realising that Dogma had got my stamina up to perhaps the best level yet, as soon as we returned to Rodellar Adrian and I turned our attention to what is surely Europe’s finest 8b+ endurance pitch: Geminis, the epic line that slices through the heart of Mascun’s mighty central amphitheatre, Gran Boveda. It’s a route in a million, and Adrian again showed the way with an extremely stylish second redpoint on our first day back. The crux of the route comes at around 38 metres, where a mean tufa shaped almost exactly like a cobra’s head spits at you right between the eyes. To pull off the series of moves up to and past this venomous stalactite, you must remain extremely cool and keep the mega-pump at bay, remembering a very precise series of foot movements and body-twists that unlock the mystery of Gran Boveda’s apex. On my first attempt, I took a huge fall from the very last hard move. Now I knew I could do it – but how soon?
The psychological pressure of the looming redpoint that night was intense: we only had two days left. I think I’ve always thrived under pressure, and I clipped the chain the following afternoon after a surprisingly smooth ascent. Later that night, over the burble of the Mascun river and the chink of wine glasses at El Puente, I slowly came to terms with the best pitch of sport climbing I’ve encountered anywhere.
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