We began the second Pyrenean trip hoping to get back into some serious sport climbing at Collegats, a spectacular steep sided gorge which is supposed to have inspired the Catalan architect Gaudi, designer of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.
We'd intended to climb at Sector Pedrera, a shaded but striking wall reached only by a tyrolean traverse across the gorge. Now we know full well that you need a steel "tandem" pulley to run over a steel cable like this, but given this is a fairly expensive and specialist piece of kit and the traverse was only short we thought we'd try and botch it with our aluminium pulley or some karabiners... Oh how wrong we were! The aluminum pulley visibly started to disintegrate before we'd even left the river bank and the karabiners just kept snagging, meaning what should have been a smooth glide across the cable turned into a knackering series of pull ups (with a full rucksack of climbing gear) and yet more visibly shredding metal. Suffice to say we retreated - lesson learned!
We did a few routes at another sector in the gorge as well as a day down at Terradets, but came to the conclusion that sport climbing, even in shady sectors in the dense humidity and ridiculous heat of mid-August in Spain is not actually that pleasant! Far better to sunbathe, sightsee and head up high! So after imbibing a bit of culture at some castles and churches it was up high we went, this time to the Colomina area of the Pyrenees. Far less sweaty and not a tyrolean in sight! :-)
