Jun 11, 2012

Psicoblok Camarasa

I first spotted this small but beautiful band of rock jutting out over the lake in winter on my way to Terradets and thought to myself when it's really hot I need to go and check that place out as it looked like great fun.
So a couple of weekends ago after trying to go climbing at the Camarasa crags and sweating off just about every route I tried we headed up to the lake to check it out.
I took a short rope and abseiled down a couple of lines the rock quality was surisingly excellent and nicely featured which it needed to be as the faces are about 45 degrees overhanging.
The first route to try was an obvious line scaling the left side of the prow on massive jugs, probably the steepest 6b out there and great fun "La via del guiri" 6b, after that we set about trying a route just round the corner which went directly up the prow. This goes up the steepest part and with no chalk and unsure about what to grab it was great fun getting spat off and splashing around in the water. I got the route after working out the sequence and is now known as "La Fiesta del bellyflop" 7b+ after that I traversed round the base of the cliff ( which is prob 5+) which is covered in cool tufa holds and tried another line which starts up a great tufa this one 7b "El Muricec", and finally I abseiled down another blank looking face to clean it up which turned out to be a great little line. Niels grabbed the first ascent naming it "The hole" 7a and I followed after him up the excellent little route ( in the photo us jumping from the top of "The hole" 7a).
The descent from "the hole" 7a

Niels on La Fiesta del bellyflop 7b+

Martin on the 6b (Eli and Dave looking in from the viewing platform)
 By no means is this Lleida province's answer to Mallorca but it is good fun and great for when the weather is really hot, the routes in general are quite short 8 or 9m  and bouldery, a good intro to dws as the water is deep, nice and warm and the routes are short. Psyched to check out Mallorca some day looks absoloutely amazing!!!

Jun 4, 2012

A late blog due to lack of internet!

Glad to do Gypsy Blood before the summer, more about it on UKC:
http://www.ukclimbing.com/news/item.php?id=67143
Its definately hot here now, over 30 most of the last week! We have less than 3 weeks to go here now before we pack up at head back to the UK (to freeze)!



Balaguer



POL!


Cookies

Jee waiting patiently for the cookies

Gypsy Blood


Jee on the trav of Favalita