Belated Spanish Climbing Post

Note the cojones on this gigantic, word-less billboard used to advertise a clothing brand throughout Spain 

Spain is a rock climbing Mecca.  Everywhere we have traveled in this county we have been surrounded by magnificent walls of rock.  For the past several days we have been climbing on the superb limestone of the Pyrenees.  If there are more beautiful and peaceful mountains in the world I have not been there.  This place is magnificent.

The village of Organyá

We are staying in Organyá, a very small town of less than a thousand people near the equally small country of Andorra on the French border in the north of Spain.  Our original intent was to stay in the much larger town of Lleida, but every hotel there was booked for a traditional Catholic festival.  A hotel manager where we tried to get a room happened to be a climber and he suggested another hotel about 100 kilometers away.  When he called that hotel for us, they too were full, but that hotel owner suggested the Hotel Dom where we ended up staying seven nights.  We were the only guests in the hotel for six of the seven nights, so we spent quite a bit of time with the proprietors over dinner.  The woman who owned the hotel is quite possibly the best cook I have ever met.  That is saying quite a bit as my mother, grandmother, sister and ex-wife are all excellent cooks, not to mention that I have been to many great restaurants.  But this woman was special, and Babe and I both savored every bite for a week.  In addition, they served local wines that were cheap and fabulous.  We were like pigs in heaven.

Our hosts right before they leave to get married on our last day

Nearby village

"Behind door # 1..."

We had come to the Pyrenees partly because an old friend of mine, Araceli Segarra, grew up here and told me many years ago how beautiful it was.  For some reason that stuck, and I contacted her recently to get some beta on where to climb.  She suggested the outstanding guidebook Lleida Climbs by Pete O’Donavan and Dani Andrada.  Araceli became famous as the first Spanish woman to climb Mt. Everest.  Her climb took place concurrent with the infamous disaster in 1990 that killed several people including the famous Everest guides Rob Hall and Scott Fischer.  All of this was chronicled in the IMAX film Everest that was filmed by an old friend of mine, David Breashears.  David and I met during our trip to climb the East Face of Everest in 1983.  I ended up devoting our whole marketing budget for the Polartec brand toward promoting this film, and got to know Araceli quite well in the process.  Araceli was also a well known fashion model in Spain at the time, and the only thing more striking than her beauty is how incredibly nice and genuine she is (not to mention a bit devilish).

The Pyrenees

Typical mountain village

The Pyrenees are located in the Spanish autonomous region of Catalan.  It is remote despite being only a couple of hours drive from Barcelona.  We feel like we have stepped back in time several hundred years even though there is lots of modern technology.  These are people who tried for years to secede from Spain and gave rise to decades of Basque terrorism; much like took place in Northern Ireland.  Those violent days are in the past, but the current economic crisis is Spain has rekindled calls for a separate nation.  Suffice it to say that these people do not consider themselves Spaniards, they are Catalans.  Araceli was the same way.  Spanish is the second language here at best, and no one speaks English (except the proprietor of our hotel).  The people here seem insular and suspicious of strangers.  Most appear to be older, like they are living in a retirement community.  We see the same old men sitting on the street every time we pass through the towns.  This is a far cry from the Spain of Barcelona one-hundred miles away.

Ah, the smell of cow shit

A couple days of solid rain force us to forego climbing in lieu of sightseeing.  Babe and I played an excellent game high up in the mountains where I pretended to be a Basque sheep herder and she pretended to be a sheep: baa!  Got to love those Catholics.

While wandering around on deserted, narrow we come across several people walking out of the woods carrying wicket baskets with which they had obviously been gathering something.  It looked very French.  Our first guess was mushrooms or truffles, but they had no pigs or dogs to find the latter.  We learned later that night at dinner that people were gathering the snails that came out during rainstorms. At my request, our cook whipped up an outstanding appetizer of escargot that I relished and Babe wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot pole.  Since then, my wonderful wife and mother have convinced me that the snails are no different from the slugs I grew up with in Seattle.  They have forever ruined my life-long appetite for escargot.

In times of earthquake, RUN from the building

This is farming and Basque sheep-herding country.  The people here often live in houses that are hundreds of years old; some of the small villages are thousands of years old.  Many of the villages are built around former castles, and all of them feature a central cathedral.  Many of the houses feature stone roofs that must weigh thousands of pounds, made from local slate.  All of their heating is fueled by wood and we saw quite a bit of wood gathering.  This is as picturesque a place as exists in the world.  The only downside is the pervasive smell of manure, enough to choke you, found in the farming valleys.

Note the solar panels, satellite dish and large wood supply

On one of our sightseeing days we venture about 30 miles to the tiny country of Andorra on the border between Spain and France.  It is the 6^th smallest country in Europe with 85,000 people living in an area about two-thirds the size of San Francisco.  Andorra turns out to be little more than a shopping destination for Spaniards on the weekend due to its lack of VAT (“value” added tax).  We regret our decision to visit it as soon as we approach the border; the traffic is at a standstill trying to get into the place.  There are well-stocked climbing shops in the towns, however, so we stop to pick up a couple pieces of climbing gear and get some diesel.  We are dreading the return, imagining hours sitting in line at Customs, but it turns out to be a non-event.  Our American passports enable us to breeze through while the locals get pulled over for car searches by bureaucrats looking to levy taxes.  Andorra has a rich history and a beautiful setting, but the shopping  frenzy seems completely out of place and hard to recommend.

Climbing near Coll Pique´

We spent most of our time in the Pyrenees at two nearby sport climbing areas: Paret de l’Obaga Negra and Coll Pique´.  Both were superbly well developed.  Babe led several easier climbs in the 5.8 range and I drug her up routes as hard as 5.11.  The climbing was fun, the protection excellent and the ambiance was as nice as anyplace I have climbed previously.  One of the unique things in this part of the world is that the names and grades of the routes are written on the rock at the base of the climbs.  That sure makes route finding easy.  We saw no one else at l’Obaga Negra, and it felt like we had our own private climbing area due to the setting and hike in. The limestone rock was quite sharp, however, so we both took care not to cut our hands. 

Via Ferrata La Regina de Peramola.
Our route winds up the steepest cliffs, going from center-right to the summit.

Typical climbing on the via ferrata

On our last day in the Pyrenees we climbed the Vía Ferrata La Regina de Peramola.  This spectacular route features 3,500 feet of climbing and is undoubtedly the best day Babe has ever experienced climbing.  I also had a blast.  Vía ferratas, or Iron Highways, were originally developed in the Dolomites of Italy in the late 1800’s to connect villages in high mountainous terrain.  More were built During World War II to help troops move between fortified positions in strategic mountain passes that saw years of continuous fighting with little to no movement of the battle line. 

Check out the hand and foot holds

Pure fun

The Ferrata La Regina was built by Josep Vergara, Verena Masius and Xavi Vidal in 1997b an 1998.  Building it involved a staggering amount of work, a greats sense of the aestheic and tremdous vision.  Unlike a traditional climb, virtually every handhold and foothold in a via ferrata is planned out.  Most are artificially placed by drilling holes in the rock and cementing in a piece of rebar that often takes the form of a u-shaped rung, much like a ladder.  Running alongside the hand and foot holds is a steel cable that is used for protection by clipping into it with carabiners that are connected to your climbing harness using two separate pieces of webbing.  Clipping into a steel cable may be comforting psychologically, but it is by no means safe.  Since the cable system is made of steel there is no dynamic load absorption as you have with a climbing rope.  So falling on a via ferrata is dangerous to say the least, and there have been numerous serious injuries and deaths as a result. Although I didn’t bother with clipping into the cable system most of the time unless I was hanging out to take pictures, Babe used a self-belay device designed for via ferratas that allegedly provides some amount of dynamic fall protection.

Broken cables add to the excitement

These routes are "non-technical" and designed to be climbed by the "non-climber".  Uh huh!  Besides the obvious danger noted above, these routes go up sheer cliffs with hundreds of feet of exposure in isolated settings; not exactly for the feint of heart.  As we stand at the base and look up at the start of the route, Babe is intimidated.  Although the climb is well beneath her technical ability, the rock is dead vertical and she wonders if she has the endurance needed to spend several hours climbing a 3,000+ foot ladder no matter how straightforward the moves.  This  particular via ferrata features strenuous over-hanging sections, traverses that are wildly exposed and intimidating chasms, one of which was spanned by a 12” wide swinging cable bridge with some broken cables.  Another required stemming between two walls with a yawning gap dropping a hundred feet between your legs.  I assure her it is a piece of cake and off we go.  The link below is to a five-minute You Tube video that gives you a good idea of the route, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=189WxtZqrhs&feature=player_embedded.  All in all, the route featured incredible views, thoughtful movement and outstanding rock.

High on the route in her favorite shirt

"Oh my god".  Babe about to get passed at the stem-across

"Designed for non-climbers"

The walk back down after summiting was equally nice.  Four other parties were on the route that day.  All but one, a lone climber who passed us at the stem-across, were behind us on the route and moving more slowly so it felt like we were all alone most of the time.  Everyone of the parties passed us on the way down as we took our time exploring this magnificent area.  Two large eagles patrolled one of the cliff lines and we spent several minutes watching them visit their airy nest across a valley. At one point in a natural cul-de-sac beneath soaring cliffs we laid on our backs and watched the clouds encroach upon a steep ravine above us, their wispy tendrils filtering the sun to create an ethereal light around us.  We never wanted to leave this spot.  It was the perfect end to our Spanish holiday.

The walk off

The next day we caught a plane from Barcelona back to the States.  Every year for the past 42 years I have made from one to a dozen trips per year to other countries. Previously, I have always looked forward to coming back to this country.  Not this time.  It isn't that there is anything less desirable about the States, or that I don't think we are the luckiest people in the world to be living here; I do.  But the world is a magnificent place, with lots of ways to live that are equally compelling albeit different than here.  Spain is one of the most comfortable and desirable places I have seen.

View from the top of the via ferrata

Epilogue

Over the past several months Babe and I have been living the dream: no schedules to keep or responsibilities beyond our own well-being, visiting beautiful places, leading low stress and healthy lives.  Life has been a constant adventure that we have enjoyed in the company of some of my best friends.  The climbing has been tremendous and reaffirmed why it is my favorite sport.  Babe and I have grown incredibly close; the trust between us on so many levels is rare and something we almost take for granted but don't.

We have been back from Spain now for several weeks and are in the process of looking for jobs. That's a good thing.  Being on the road is great, sitting around the house is not.  We both look forward to re-entering the fray and whatever new adventures that entails.  At the very least, however, we fully realize that we share a passion for travel, adventure, the unusual, outdoor activities and each other.

Hard to resist

As much as I look forward to getting back to work, this sabbatical from it has been totally invigorating.  Life is good.