Spain a Muerte!
The Kutxabank Mendi Film Festival invited me to come to Spain for a mini-tour, and I really couldn’t not go. I hadn’t been to Spain in at least a decade. Obviously it’s become an epicenter of hard sport climbing, but Spain is really off the radar for base jumping. And in recent years, my Europe visits have been very much about wingsuit base. So the festival was a great excuse to revisit Spain, and I could add on a week for some climbing and maybe some jumping in the sun (I hoped!) with friends. Mario decided not to come on this one, citing our very recent France/China trip and too much work to get done at home, which I couldn’t really argue with 🙁 So off it was to Spain for me, with rock shoes, base rig and wingsuit, and no real plan except to check it out and have as much fun as possible!
For the first week, I traveled to Bilbao, Madrid, Toledo and Pamplona making presentations for the festival.
The Basque climbers and festival organizers helped me get around, took me climbing on days off, and made it an amazing week!
Bilbao is the home of the Guggenheim museum, an architectural phantasmagora sheathed in titanium.
I got to spend an afternoon inside, wandering through the exhibits.
In Madrid, my friend Dario of Desnivel took me to the Desnivel bookstore, a beautiful historic place that has been a bookstore since 1898.
It’s filled with fascinating things like the wall of climbers and an impressive archive of climbing magazines.
Another friend, Eva, not only translated for two of the shows, but also took me climbing to La Pedriza, a surprising area of immaculate granite that rises up an enormous hillside and spills into many canyons down the back of it.
And of course, a local base jumper happens to own a famous Flamenco bar in Madrid, and invited me to come for dinner and a show. Though dinner didn’t start until 11:30 pm (!) it was definitely worth missing some sleep!
In Pamplona, we suddenly discovered that we didn’t have a translator, and a climber stepped out of the audience to volunteer… my new friend Ibai did a great job that evening, and ended up meeting up with me later in the trip at Riglos for climbing as well.
I quickly noticed that everyone in Spain knows each other, and everyone does everything a muerte! I was planning to spend my week off with my old friend Jordi in Catalunya, and two American friends Joe and Colette. Naturally everyone in Spain knows Jordi (aka Pelon). I’d been given the contact for a local base jumper in Lleida, Richi, and it turned out that he lives a few doors away from Jordi, naturally. 🙂 So although I didn’t have any firm plans for anything before I got to Spain (aside from bringing just enough gear to do whatever presented itself), everything just started falling into place once I was there. That seems to be how things work in Spain, which is awesome.
Although I only had 6 days to stay after the festival tour, it was so full of climbing, base jumping and fun that it felt like a month!
Jordi and I climbed in a few spots near Santa Linya (the site of that enormous cave where everyone is climbing 9a everything nowadays), and then Richi and I went to Mont-Rebei to make a beautiful wingsuit jump together.
The next day, we went to a closer spot for a classic Moab-style short jump on the Torre Rojo.
Then it was time to move over to see Joe and Colette for a day.
Colette and I went to the gorgeous cliff Terradets together (where I would like to move and climb forever), and as usual I never wanted to leave. But I was determined to visit Riglos, having heard so much about it. So I tore myself away and moved over to Riglos, where Jordi met me for some more climbing.
As promised, Riglos is ridiculously beautiful, and has 900 foot walls of steep conglomerate and a charming little village where dogs walk around and make friends with everyone.
La Visera is an ultra-classic wall for climbing and jumping, and I really wanted to do both! Unfortunately it was geographically inconvenient for Richi to join me, but it was extremely obvious where to jump and where to land, so I figured I’d jump it on my own after Jordi and I climbed a route.
We climbed the insanely steep and classic Fiesta de los Bicepes. Jordi decided it would be a good idea if we each linked 2 pitches as we swung leads, and I was well pumped from the relentlessly steep climbing and the weight of the rope out below by the time we reached the top!
Being so steep and big, the wall is really deceptive. Towards the top I was sure we had one pitch left to go: it turned out there were 4! The climbing is very much like Maple Canyon, but way way longer.
My plan was to wake up in the dark the next morning and run to the top to make a jump, and then get to climb again with Jordi and Ibai who had shown up. I started up the trail with the moon beside the towers, and was greeted by strong gusts of wind which pretty quickly made me decide to turn around 🙁 The cold wind just increased through the morning, and it didn’t seem so great for jumping or climbing. After being so lucky with the weather for my whole 2 week trip, I couldn’t really complain about getting shut down, but was pretty disappointed because it was my last day and I really didn’t want to miss out on the jump. But c’est la vie! When it’s windy, it’s windy, and I like climbing too.
Finally we decided to rally around noon and go climb another mega-classic, Zulu, as a party of 3. As Ibai was belaying Jordi on the first pitch, I suddenly noticed that the wind had quit, which is very odd for mid-day. I watched and wondered for a few minutes, and then promptly bailed on Jordi and Ibai, but luckily they understood.
An hour later, I was on the top of La Visera, getting to jump it after all, which made me very happy. Jordi and Ibai hollered at me as I fell past them on the steep headwall, and flew down to the lowest possible landing area. After I landed, the wind was still dead calm, so I quickly packed again and ran up for a second one, this time using the higher landing spot on a neighboring hilltop just to mix it up. Though I missed out on Zulu, I was very happy to have gotten to climb and make a couple of jumps, both!
After a fantastic trip like that, it was really hard to leave, especially knowing it had been snowing in Moab since I’d left. But I know I’ll be back in Spain again…
Venga!
Hello Steph,
This is absolutely amazing. I am new to climbing, but reading about all your adventures I have already started to make a list of places I want to visit and hopefully climb. Thank you for your blog. Happy New Year.
thanks Sharon…you definitely need to put Spain on the list!
I am really happy that you like spain, next time do not miss Ordesa: Classic and gorgeous.
I already want to come back!