The complete guide to climbing in Spain, Catalonia, Basque Country and Andorra
Björn Pohl of my native Sweden runs maybe the most up-to-date climbing news blog in the world: The Low Down. Yesterday he posted a really nice interview with local climber Iker Pou who just did the second ascent of Sharmas route Demencia senil, 9a+ in Margalef. We climbed in the sector next to the Laboratori this weekend and it is completely mindblowing that it’s possible to climb this piece of rock.
Read the interview with Iker here.
Posted in News.
– 2010-02-08
We’ve written a little about the bouldering we have here in Catalonia in the north east of Spain. Shown some photos. Trying to get our friends from abroad to come here to boulder with us. Then out of nowhere “Outside – the bouldering movie” shows up featuring some of the coolest bouldering areas in Catalonia! La Comarca, Savassona, The Quarry, Fussimanya, Vilajuiga and Targassone are all fairly close together and all featured in the movie. Besides these areas internationally famous once are also visited: Orlu, Brione, Cresciano, Chironico, Magic Wood and Sant Gottard.
The best thing about the movie, besides the good climbing and nice footage in HD-quality? It’s a free download! Head over to their website, click Download and wait a few minutes. Well, 700 MB normally takes a little time to download.
If you want to try out the Catalonian bouldering areas featured in the movie, Can Janot is a good place to stay at.
Posted in Bouldering, News.
– 2010-02-04
Photo: Pär Lindholm
Photo: Marieta aka Tufa-Tufa
To practice aid climbing, you can do it in all the trad sectors but the most famous is El pilar del Segre. If you want to enjoy a complete day of climbing, combingin a couple of routes in La Roca Alta or climbing a complete route in La Roca dels Arcs should be enough for an average climber.
If you are coming to climb here for first time, I recommend to get used to the local grading and the climbing style. A good route to do for first contact is Necronomicón. Quite fast and well bolted, it can be done only with quickdraws and it’s easy to combine with another route.
Some other recommended routes of Vilanova are: Tierra de Nadie, El Somni de Quimfer, La Chica del Martini, El Señor de los bordillos, Porno Estar, Amadeus, Casting Buñuel… ad infinitum. You can check a post of Julia on Wild Planet, another recommended one!
By the way, the route I climbed was Peque Mantecas: a 6 pitches route of 160m. The first pitch is a pumpy 6a+ crack, protected by pitons and a bolt. If you know how to jam (I don’t) it’s easier:
The second pitch is an easy traverse with a boulder move protected with a bolt, here you’ll see the tough V+ gradings of Vilanova… The third is a clean and easy diedhral where all the cams and nuts can be placed perfectly. I joined this two pitches in one using long slings.
The fourth is a vertical wall with really nice moves. It’s very protected with pitons and bolts in the hardest part, V+ again. The fifth is an easy traverse -with the worst rock quality of all the route- that lays you on the bottom of the exit of the route and the wall: a clean slab full of holds that takes you to the last -and hard- diedhral with a difficulty of 6b (you can climb it in A0).
A good route climbed with good friends!
By the way, soon you’ll be able to order the Vilanova de Meià guide at our shop or you can buy it at Cirera’s Bar in the village. Enjoy your climbing!
– 2010-02-03
The new airport in Lleida (Alguaire), has been opened recently to the public. That’s good news for the territory and good news for all climbers arround the world!
From the airport, very close to Lleida, you can reach world class climbing destinations in less than 2h by car: Rodellar, Riglos, Santa Linya, Margalef, Cornudella de Montsant, Oliana…
From February 2nd to March 26th, will be flights from-to Paris and Palma de Mallorca.
From April and on, will be flights from-to Paris, Palma de Mallorca, Milano and Frankfurt.
Vueling and Ryanair are two companies that will work in the airport, so low-cost climbing holidays are knocking at your door. Enjoy your climbings!
Posted in News.
– 2010-01-21
Climbing in Malanyeu, 1 hour north of Barcelona. Amazing rock quality! Click to see the photo in a bigger size.
These last weeks have been pretty crazy. I’m in the middle of getting my company and my travel agency (which Climb in Spain is a part of) up and going. So instead of climbing I’ve been signing papers, traveling all over the city to get other papers stamped and meeting with accountants and banks. Oh, and together with my companion we have been visiting wine yards, nice houses to rent, meeting with hotels etcetera. I even, in the name of work, had to go and see FC Barcelona play Sevilla. Besides all this the weather has been bad so I hope the hours put into work now pays off on time on rock in the future.
For Climb in Spain we’re happy to see that the traffic is increasing and that we get more and more requests for our apartments and houses. As soon as the weather gets better we hope to travel to Rodellar, Terradets, Lleida and Allbaracín to look for nice places for climbers to stay. I would like to say that we are about to open our on-line store but we simply have to push it a little to the future. Well, I will take care of it as soon as possible, I promise you. If you’re looking for a specific guidebook, send me an e-mail and I’ll get back to you.
Luckily for us other people are busy blogging about climbing now when we are busy with everything else. Julia pointed me to 50 years of Space Exploration, a new blog in English for a guy living here in Barcelona. Not all the posts are about climbing but they are well worth reading anyway. Don’t miss Montserrat – a brief history.
Do you know anyone blogging in English about climbing in Spain (or the Iberian peninsula)? Please share!
Posted in Site.
– 2010-01-20
If you got any major magazine store close to your home, I’m sure they offer it. Otherwise you can order it or subscribe from Desnivel.
Posted in Bouldering.
– 2010-01-14
Hey! This last week and current days have been very cold. We had to handle with snow, wind and very low temperatures in order to climb. Luckily, most of the walls are south faced and dressed with our coats, gloves, hats and with some hot tea in our thermal bottles, we managed to climb.
Some catalan blogs show us pictures of Totxo Sílfides in a hard to see snowed Montserrat, working some 8a and 8b. Some other, show us pictures of the snowstorm in Cornudella del Montsant. The last and funniest one, is a friend of mine that went to Siurana and his van got fully covered by the snow (here, here, and here).
Fortunately, next week the sun will shine again and all the climbing fanatics like us will go climbing in our warm rock. Have fun and don’t get a cold 
Posted in News.
– 2010-01-12
After hearing a lot about Montgrony the last year or so we finally made a visit to this legendary climbing area earlier this week. We where blown away. It’s not big, about 300 routes in total, but the quality of the climbing is just fantastic. To fully enjoy the venue I would say it’s good to be comfortable on the steep stuff and being able to on-sight 7a or so. For my climbing partner and me, just breaking into the 7th grade, it was quite the experience but we where clearly limited in our selection of routes on the main wall. On the upper wall and the surrounding areas (there are hundred of more routes on the nearby walls), we have enough climbing for many, many visits.
The area is only about 1 hour from Girona, the city where the RyanAir flights to Barcelona lands. A cheap flight from anywhere in Europe, a rental car and you’re ready to climb! Oh, yes, you need a guidebook. For that I highly recommend the new Ripollés guidebook, buy the guide and you help giving back to the local climbing community. The guidebook is by all accounts superior to the Rockfax or the other guides I’ve seen from the area. (The guidebook will of course be available from us as soon as we have negotiated the final details with the big bookstore that will handle our shop.).
Best time of year to climb is from October to April. After that you’re limited to climbing early in the morning or late at night, the walls are 80% south facing. We climbed there now in end of December and started the morning with down jackets and where able to climb in t-shirt just a couple of hours later. Montgrony is at high altitude, 1400 meters, so it gets cold at night and you might just get snowed on.
And then, finally, where to stay? I was so taken by the climbing and the area that I went straight in and talked to the owner of the hotel laying, well, among the cliffs. We are therefor happy to present possibly one of the best situated lodging offerings for anywhere in Spain. You can reach out of the hotel and touch the rock. Here is a longer presentation of Hotel Montgrony and the offer we made for you.
Any questions or thoughts? Just post a comment and we’ll try to answer!
Posted in Crags.
– 2010-01-03
Nice sandstone bouldering north of Barcelona
After a long wait FINALLY we are established on our new web hotel. So much faster, so much better! Right now a friend from California is visiting so I’m planning more climbing than anything else for the next couple of days. Well, I’ll call it work and I’ll promise you a report from the tufa Paradise of Montgrony and some crags around the town of Berga, all withing an hour and half from Barcelona.
Oh, we’ve added a couple of new houses too! Looking for the perfect place to stay for your bouldering trip to Spain? We’ve have just the house for you! Can Janot is a super nice house right next to the sandstone areas of Savassona, La Comarca and Fussimany. With a short drive you reach the granite paradise Targassone and the conglomerate of Sant Joan de Vilatorrada.
The other house, Casa Figueretes, is the perfect base for you Costa Blanca climbing trip. Where to climb? Puig Campana, Sella, Peñón de Ifach, Ponoch, Sierra del Toix, Mascarat, Divino, Echo Valley, Altea, Olta, Bernia… and dozens of crags from 5 minutes to half an hour at most from the house!
We’re looking forward to an exiting 2010, that is for sure!
Posted in Site.
– 2009-12-28
I’m currently in my native Sweden enjoying the amazing 19 hours of darkness that December offers. Being used to the >320 days of sun in northern Spain I decided not to get overly depressed but instead extend the map functionality of the site. I must say that after the last days of work I’m pretty proud about it! What is missing now is more data. Pere is doing an amazing job trying to locate and pin down all climbing areas of Catalonia and I will try to at least place the biggest areas of the rest of Spain.
If you feel that you can help the climbing community by helping us placing crags, climbing gyms and other things on the map, please use this form.
So try out the new map functionality and let me know if you find any bugs or want even more functionality added!
Posted in Site.
– 2009-12-05
