A sport climbing holiday was made more memorable by climbing La Directa - the wildly steep and great fun conglomerate route at Sant Llorenç de Montgai.
The rural province of Catalunya is a beautiful place to climb with a large variety of rock. Most climbers head to the area for the lifetimes worth of single pitch limestone sport climbing. There is definitely more on offer however such as long mult-pitch routes on Vilanova de Meià and shorter offerings at Sant Llorenç de Montgai. Beautiful gorge walking and ridge scrambling can also be found in the area.
I had a week in the area. It is peaceful, reasonably quiet (when I went at least), and a perfect autumn climbing break...
I teamed up with a Barcelona based climber to climb Jordi Andreu (6a+, 160m) on Sant Llorenç de Montgai. We had a topo found on-line and took with us a hand full of cams as it was described as "Classic". In Spain this refers to Trad climbs however the route had far more bolts than I expected even for Spain and we only placed a couple runners here and there. The route weaves around up the cliff in 5 pitches and was sustained at about 6a though the first pitch I remember having a solid 6b move on it. The 6a+ pitch was the highlight.
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 | | Jordi Andreu |
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 | | Nues on an early pitch |
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 | | Neus following |
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 | The walk back
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The following day I climbed
La Directa (6b, 95m) with my friend Mike. The route as the name suggests ploughs directly up a direct line in 4 pitches. From the ground the wall looks like a mud pile. The climbing however is steep and with massive holds. The rock is conglomerate and while it looks like a tottering heap its great to climb on. Bolting couldn't have been better. So much fun!
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 | Mike starts us off
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 | Well bolted
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 | Great steep climbing
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 | Me on a hanging stance
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 | The view
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 | | Final Pitch |
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Cragging in this rural part of Catalunya is great and we spent the remaining time sport climbing at Cubells, Os de Balaguer, Santa Linya and Camarasa.
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 | Mike on 6C+ ground
(Santa Linya)
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 | A 7a+ which I couldn't quite
get clean (at Santa Linya) |
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| Mike on a corner at Camarasa |
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Cubells view - rural and pleasant
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