Page 23 - 20145 AMA Spring

Here are a few top tips:
1. Know your route. Not having to stop and read a guide book or consult a topo will save a lot of time and give you confidence to move faster. The route described above can be split into three days of independent climbing.
you feet in and out of rock shoes or rope management. Should all be done whilst your belaying. This will take a little practice to ensure you retain appropriate belay technique.
Be confident in the dark, no one ever died of “dark”, but plenty of accidents have occurred because people have made mistakes or panicked in the dark. During the summer months I have climbed Espolon Central at night to avoid the heat of the day. Consider what the moon is doing and the weather conditions. Don’t forget you head torch!
If anyone fancies doing this route and wants to email me for further info about other long routes on the Costa Blanca please use this address. rich@theorangehouse.co.uk
6. 2. Be prepared. Only take what you really need to climb.
Weight is your enemy.
3. Use a Camelback. Being able to drink without taking you pack off is priceless. Consider using IsoStar Carbo or something similar. It will help reduce any glucose lows.
4. If it’s easy, run it out. Just because you haven’t put any gear in during the last 50 feet of climbing does mean you have to if you’re walking on easy ground.
5. If you aren’t belaying or climbing, we’re doing it wrong! Background activities like eating and drinking, taking
7.
Happy pseudo big walling!!
pricky and loose! Instead stay on the blunt rib on your left which is easy and quite safe after the first protectionless 10m. The last pitch takes a right ward leaning line on brilliantly threaded limestone, this is one of my favourite pitches.
Follow a faint path into the nationally famous “Roldan gap”. Legend has it that Roldan’s lover Alda was fated to die when the last of the sun’s rays shone on her so Roldan cut out part of the mountain in order that the sun would take longer to set ensuring that Alda would live a few moments longer.
It is possible from here to escape Eastward again, with a 25 metre abseil and a short scramble into the gully, but we’ve come this far let’s not show cowardice in the face of a big wall!
Looking at the far side of Roldan Gap a small wind battered tree down to the left (North) this marks the next pitch. A number of historic pegs encourage you up in two grade 5 pitches to the summit ridge. From here an easy scramble to the Col and the end of a seriously epic days’ climb. The top of the mountain is only a ten minute walk from here, and it would be rude not to summit, even if it is dark!
The escape ability and the lack of steepness of this combination of routes probably means it is not really a “big wall”, but the route measures 1500 metres of climbing and scrambling. That’s almost a mile!
How do you climb a monster like this?
What do you need to tackle a monster route of 30 plus pitches? Speed and more speed but this doesn’t mean risk and more risk, this mean efficiency and controlled risk management. I see many people every year getting caught out by inefficiency sometime on relatively short routes of three hundred metres.
Any big route requires a little planning and forethought. Let me try and put speed into perspective. Assume there are twelve usable daylight hours. Thirty pitches in twelve hours is twenty four minutes a pitch. I call this the “Pitch to Pitch Time”. The time it takes for the leader: To lead the pitch, build the belay, call safe and take in any slack. The second to: strip their belay, climb the pitch, make themselves safe and sort the rack. Finally for the next leader to leave the stance.
If you were to take five minutes to build a belay, seems reasonable, followed by five minutes for the second to sort and strip their belay, over the day this translates to FIVE hours! Almost half your usable time scale.
Further reading
“Escaladas en el Puig Campana” ISBN 8460635287 Blanca Rockfax.
or the Costa
ARMY MOUNTAINEER 21