Erik Massih

A quick leg stretcher in San Benet before heading down to Chulilla. Steep pocketed limestone conglomerate. Just love this style of climbing.

The pueblo of Chulilla. We spent a couple of weeks in Spain for X-mas. This time with the rest of the family, Audun, Hilde and Sofia, as well as with two friends Jonas and Julia.

Church.

Sofia, Audun and Hilde. I can’t really describe how much I enjoy travelling all of us together, specially showing the kids places and seeing them interact with other cultures. And even the shortest casual approaches can be an adventure for them.

Sector Pared de enfrente. One of the better sectors in my opinion. First day of climbing started out good. After warming up with on sighting the long Los Franceces I hopped on Entre dos Caminos since it had a cool looking tufa in the start. Ended up with on sighting that one as well. The following day I on sighted both Ramallar and El remanso de las Mulas and by doing so climbing my 30th route graded 8a or harder of the year (Incl a few Frankenjura 9+ and a whole bunch of overgraded ones).

On a stroll along the rim of the canyon.

Los Kiddos enjoying a rest day among the ruins.

Stone face in Valencia.

Turia valley

Hilde on La Roturas…

…and Audun on Tracy Family.

I like to think that I have a good head for ‪‎climbing‬ but seeing someone dear charge up past a bolt on polished ‪limestone way too scetched to clip is a totally different experience than beeing in the same situation myself. Audun just kindly asked me to relax and then continued up to a good stance to safely clip by his feet. I guess I have myself to blame. Puh! Audun climbing at sector Miguel Gómez, on the opposite side of the river from Cañaverales.

The gorge, river Turia with the sectors Pared Blanca in the back and Cañaverales on the right two really nice sectors with 50 m mega pitches. Tres cool!

The goofball in her playground!

Conglomerate towers. Back in Montserrat I decided it was time take Audun up a proper multi pitch route. He’d been curious for a while and after seeing a slide show by Babsi Zangerl about climbing in the Dolomites he was even more keen. We chose “Benson” a fairly easy and well bolted route on the NE face of Magdalena Inferior, the 2nd tower from the left among the Gorros, a group of spires close to the Monestary.

Audun plodding his way up the potato field towards the first belay.

We started rather late in the afternoon and on the first belay it started raining. I asked if we should bail, but he would hear nothing of that. So we kept going.

I like climbing partners who don’t bail just because it starts raining a bit. He was a bit scared at times but motivated all the way. Cool!

We climbed the last pitch in the dark and when we topped out it had started to rain properly and the wind had picked up pretty much as well. kind of good, he got a slight feeling of how it can be in the mountains. Luckily I’d packed rain jackets as well as puffy ones. Unfortunately I’d only packed one headlamp so we rapped the tower in the dark with only one lamp. His first bigger climbing experience turned out to be a bit more wild than I’d planned and I thought that this would be the last time he’d ever venture out into this kind of excursion. But on the hike down, where we got lost and spent nearly two hours to get down to the village, he was already talking about places he wanted to go and routes he wanted to do. I guess I have a new climbing partner.