Finally October was here and so was our flight to Spain. It all started a bit strange. We arrived to Valencia airport and it was sooo hooot. Yes, we took a cheap Ryanair flight and I had almost all my clothes on...many many layers:)) So we were like ohhh noooo we didn’t bring any shorts.
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| Albarracin was not that hot. One cold morning I did some warm ups in my down jacket. |
Next thing was car rental. Off course we didn’t take any extra insurance and we made a nice scratch as soon as we drove out of the parking. Well, it happens. Then the rain started and the next day all the shops were closed because of a holiday we didn’t know about. And I caught a bad cold. So what else could go wrong? Nothing.
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| Nice bloc to start a day. Here is the last move on 6B, pretty committing! Luckily, Andrea and Petra had lots of crash pads with them, so we could climb anything we wanted. |
After a not very promising start of the trip we got to the boulder area. And it looked amazing! We forgot about the scratch on the car and my cold got better instantly. We took a walk around and met our swiss friends Andrea and Petra who also just arrived and planed to spend two weeks in Albarracin like us. The rock dries extremely quickly so after the morning rain and a nice walk the perfect sand stone was dry and we were ready to climb.
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| Gašper on one of the mantels. |
Arrastradero, Techos, La Fuente, Entre Aguas or something else, there’s so many good problems and so many different styles on one place. This was our first visit and because we liked everything a lot, we didn’t bother looking for a project we could do in 2 weeks, we just wanted to climb all day on everything we walked by.
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| Beautiful arrete in Arrastradero. Arista de los belgas 7B. |
Life in Spain is pretty much easy going and sometimes you get a feeling that the time stops a little bit. The whole atmosphere seems pretty relaxing which is perfect for climbing holidays like this. We kind of got into that spanish mood and this is how our climbing days looked like: after a nice long sleep we had breakfast from the famous bakery/panaderia. Fresh bread called rodondo and all sorts of croissants, coffee and then we were ready to climb ‘till dark.
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| Playing tourists for a rest day. The old town looks really nice from the top of the hill. |
I don’t remember the last time I climbed this much. I had a pretty bad climbing year and now I feel like things will change. It’s always cool to be somewhere you’ve never been before. Beside climbing you also get to explore the new place and it’s so exciting to climb on new stuff.
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| Ineschakra, a hard crimpy 7B, pretty much different from anything else we tried. I needed the whole afternoon to find the beta. Thanks to Petra who didn't give up on it, I did it at the end. |
In 2 weeks I did many problems between 7A and 7B which is a perfect difficulty level for me if I just want to climb a lot. Still, I had to try pretty hard on some problems. Usually the mantel is the crux (like in Tetris 7B for example) where you need to bring your hips over a bulge and it can get pretty tiring For me it was also a good training for my dynamics Many roofs with big moves from jug to jug and then a rock over. It's pretty physical and the guys were just playing with it, when Petra and I had to try pretty hard. But then you can also find crimpy problems with strange positions like Ineschakra, (a hard 7B which just us girls did) or very Fontainebleau style technical things like Sale huevos, 7A+ (I can't believe how many times I fell on that top out on our last day).
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| Popeye |
I'll come back to Albarracin for sure. I can say it's one of my favorite areas now. The red sand stone, the lines, the variety of the climbs, the whole scenery and the experience is worth coming back to.
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| You think it's over once you get the jug? Not really. This roof is pretty tricky. One of those I'll need to get back to next time. |
