Having gone with the easy option yesterday, there was nothing left for me to do at L'Aparador today apart from get on 'De aqui a la luna y volver'. With some very suspect rock towards the bottom and no chalk anywhere I was a bit nervous about getting on it. The route goes straight up the steep and very blank looking wall, in between two very obvious and well-chalked crack lines. On these two routes there are plenty of chalked holds visible in the cracks all the way up, and they go at 7b+ and 7c, so I was a bit concerned at how hard this one was going to be, given that there aren't really any holds to be seen at all!
After a quick warm-up on Rauxa (7a+) to get the draws in for Tash to try, I set off. As expected, the bottom section was a little nerve wracking due to the rock quality, meaning that I probably got more pumped than normal overgripping all the holds! Thankfully this band is short-lived and after three or four clips you get to much more typical solid Siurana limestone. The rest of the route is stunning, with superb technical climbing and is steeper than you normally expect in Siurana, meaning it's going to be pumpy to link together. It's given 8a+ in the guide but, although it's difficult to know until I've done some overlapping sections and found the resting places, I suspect it may be hard for that - even pushing 8b. There were two sections of climbing that took me a long time to work out, and even then the sequences were desperate and runout. But it's an incredible route and in the shade all day so it'll be a good project to have for the next few months or so with the temperatures on the increase. So we'll see how it goes...
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