Tash's Blog: Sunshine and sandbags...

Sandbag:
(noun) A climb which receives a much lower grade than deserved.

And these we found in abundance today, as well as plenty of sunshine - the rain yesterday didn't last very long! We went up to Montsant, and a sector that neither of us had been to before - La Grallera.

The view from the parking at Morera de Montsant village up to the Falconera & Barrots sectors.

Setting off from the village.

The view looking out from up at the crags.

The sector was actually spread out and separated into different areas along the wall. They turned out to be of varying quality - some definitely better than others!

One of the better sub-sectors (Cova de la Grallera)

My 'warm-up' was an amazing 7a up a beautiful prow of rock. Unfortunately it was a complete and utter sandbag with hard climbing, dirty pockets, some snappy holds and ridiculous run-outs (the first bolt was about 8-9m off the floor!). A stunning line, but 7a it was not!

After a short rest (much shorter than I needed!) I turned my attention to the incredible looking smooth wall to the right of the prow. This had a handful of really nice looking routes on it but, despite being less steep, they all looked way blanker than the route I'd just done, so I chose the easiest of the lot (a 7b+ called Multichop!) but didn't really expect to get up it, considering how tired I was from the 'warm-up' and how much of a sandbag it had been!

But unbelievably, after 40mins of serious fighting and much to my immense satisfaction, I managed to on-sight it! I was really pleased with this, as again the pockets were filthy and there was no chalk anywhere. The problem with this type of rock is that there are just so many pockets to choose from - all of varying depths - but you don't know how good they'll be until you test them. So without chalk or tick-marks you end up spending a very long time in one position, getting more and more pumped, testing all the different pockets until you find one good enough to pull on! The route was of amazing quality, with totally solid rock all the way, fantastic technical climbing, and a few cruxes thrown in. Brilliant!

Checking out the routes - the '7a' prow is the line directly above me now, and the 7b+ follows the wide grey streak in the middle of the wall to the right.

But after exerting so much effort into the route I felt completely destroyed and needed a good rest!

For anyone who wanted to know what being pumped means - this is it! After doing 'Multichop' (F7b+)

Tash then on-sighted two really good (and thankfully reasonably graded!) routes - a 6a+ and a 6b. After I'd recovered a bit, it was time for round 2 - unfortunately this proved to be the knockout. There was a really nice looking wall that we'd seen from the previous sector with only one route up it. Supposedly a short 6c+ leading to a 7b extension. I thought that it'd be a good one to try next. How wrong I was!! Once we'd finally got to the base of it, after a good deal of bush-whacking through yet more thorns, I set off. The lower wall was absolutely filthy with some really tricky climbing on suspect rock. Again, this was totally undergraded. But when I arrived at a big break in the rock, with a bulge to pull over above, the rock just started to disintegrate. I got stood on the ledge and had to clear a load of loose rock off it, including a microwave sized piece that was just waiting to come down. Tash improvised by wrapping my hoodie round her head to protect herself from the smaller pieces that were coming down! Finally I got to the end of the '6c+' bit, but with what looked like more of the same above I decided to cut my losses and sack it off!!

You can always rely on these esoteric Montsant sectors to provide a bit more excitement than your normal day of sport climbing!

Tash with her makeshift helmet! [and shiny new harness]

So after a disappointing, but I guess adventurous, time we went to the final sector in the book. Which turned out to be the icing on the cake in terms of the level of sandbagging! I thought..."I'll just finish off with a nice couple of 6c's to end the day". What actually happened was that I got very pumped on the lower half of a 6c+ doing what I thought was the crux, only to find the actual crux on the upper wall, which I couldn't even do! I ended up bailing out and finishing up a 6a+, and when I was having to try hard to get up the last bit of this I came to the conclusion that it was time to call it a day!

Tash did a few more routes at this sector (including a couple more sandbags, obviously!) before we ate some oranges in the warm late afternoon sunshine and then walked down. Another enjoyable, but humbling, day of exploration!