Well....not exactly!
After the torrential rain all day Friday and a poor forecast for Saturday we decided to buy a new coffee pot and resign ourselves to a day of mooching and watching films. Unfortunately the coffee pot didn't work (damn Chinos!!), and it didn't even rain a drop all day :-( But after so much rain the day before and a better forecast for Sunday we settled on convincing ourselves that everything would be wet and we'd be better off inside. During the afternoon I also had to convince myself that what I saw out of the window WASN'T blue sky. They'd forecast rain so how could it be blue sky? Best not to look outside.
On Sunday morning I obviously regretted this decision, as the cloud was back and hanging low over the hills. It wasn't raining, but it was cold and very grey. We decided to head out anyway, but changed the original plan of Margalef or Raco de Missa in favour of somewhere closer.
Destination today: Arbolí - and the sectors around the Ermita de Sant Pau.
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| The not very picturesque 'Ermita de Sant Pau', Arbolí - complete with a yapping ankle-biter guard dog. |
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| Overlooking Arbolí village. It was pretty grim on first arrival...and stayed that way all day! |
This is, again, somewhere that I've never been so thought it'd be a good day to try it out - if it turned out to be rubbish then no great loss.
The crags were easy enough to find, but unfortunately not the most inspiring. Pretty short (15m) and vaguely reminiscent of somewhere like Horseshoe quarry in the peak, only natural. The routes actually turned out to be better than they first appeared, with some interesting moves, and the rock was very solid, if a little damp today. It was hard to get warm and then stay warm with the really cold, damp air that was around, but we managed to get plenty of climbing done. I on-sighted five 7a or 7a+ routes, despite not being able to feel my fingers once. I had to resort to redpointing another 7a+ though after getting a ridiculous cold pump about 4m off the floor!
Tash managed to on-sight the worst looking 6b in the world and redpoint a nice 6c with "icy sausage fingers", so a good day for her too.
After we got tired of fighting the battle to stay warm we went to check out where some guys had appeared from earlier in the day with a Black Diamond Mondo pad. I'd forgotten that a new bouldering guide to the Prades area has been published - must check it out some time. Anyway we had a quick look around and found some half decent looking problems. It's not Fontainebleau by any stretch of the imagination, but worth a day or two!
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| Nice looking traverse line. |
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| Very good looking problem on small crimps up the overhanging wall. |
The other highlight of the day was finding these neolithic cave paintings under one section of the crag...amazing that even back then they were climbing hard!
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| Cave painting man climbs F9b+ |
We ended the day with a scout around some of the other crags in the area to see if they were worth coming back for. For future reference:
El Cremat - no.
Forat del Serratell - yes.
El Duc - half day?
So despite the crappy weather it ended up being quite a productive day. On-sight mileage, tour of a new bouldering area and some potential new crags as well as taking in some culture with a bit of prehistoric art!
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