Riglos! (in which Ali and Naomi have adventures...)

I was trying to think of some suitably impressive words to use to describe Riglos, but I can't so here's a photo instead:

The towers are about 300m high and are made of variously sized pebbles stuck together by a sandstone matrix. Close up, they look improbable, like a large pile of rubble that should fall down, but somehow doesn't. It's also home to the largest colony of griffin vultures in Europe - they circle around catching updrafts from the towers, making the place feel even more atmospheric.

We spend just under a week here, and were joined by Naomi (who also visited us earlier in Chulilla) and Charles (a climbing partner of Andy's from the Cheddar days). Andy and Charles had their sights set on some of the classic overhanging routes on Mallo Visera (Andy wrote about this here), so Naomi and I went exploring.

We had great fun on several days playing the fortunately/unfortunately game. It's not really much of a game - you just describe things that happened to you prefacing anything that went wrong with "unfortunately" and your solution to the problem with "fortunately". It amused me though, so I thought I'd write about our adventures in this style...

Day 1: unfortunately, on Naomi and Charles' first day there was a speed climbing competition going on in Riglos - routes had been allocated a certain number of points, and participants had to collect as many points as they could in a 12 hour period. This meant that the classic routes on the main towers were busy. Fortunately, the Mallos Pequeños (the smaller towers to the east of the main ones) were not included in the climbing competition, so we decided to head there instead. Pequeño is a relative term - the towers were still 100m high!

Mallos Pequeños (Aguja Roja is the one on the right)

We decided to do the Normal route on the Aguja Roja (graded 4+) as a gentle introduction to the strange rock. We made it up the first two pitches, despite some initial misgivings about the state of the rock - it turned out to be a lot more solid than it looked.

Crazy rock, before the rain...

...and after

Unfortunately, when Naomi was leading halfway up the fourth pitch (having decided to join the third and fourth pitches together) there was a crash of thunder and the heavens opened. Fortunately, we were highly resourceful, and organised a quick and efficient retreat, abseiling down in torrential rain which then turned into hail. The storm only lasted about 30 minutes, but, unfortunately, the rock was soaked and we were too. Fortunately, the sun came out afterwards so we squidged back to the village and steamed dry in the sunshine.

Day 2: with an earlier start, a more stable weather forecast and an absence of speed climbers, we set our sights on a bigger objective on the main Riglos towers - the Travesia de las Cinco Puntas del Mallo Firé (also graded 4+). The Firé is the west-most of the main towers, and has a distinctive, many-peaked ridge line along the top. Unfortunately, as seen from the east during the walk up from the village, it looks intimidating and impenetrable.

Mallo Firé

Fortunately, there's a sneaky easy route round the back that allows access to the ridge at an amenable grade. From there, the route goes to the top of peaks Montolar, Mallefré, Mateo and the tiny subsidiary peak of Buzón, before finishing on the slightly disappointingly named Punta de No Importa.

Unfortunately, our rope was too short to get all the way to the end. Fortunately, I decided this was close enough...

Unfortunately, taking in so many peaks meant that the route was quite complicated - lots of climbing up, abseiling back down, and some devious route finding. Fortunately, we formed an efficient and honed climbing team so this was no problem - we ticked off all the peaks, enjoyed some amazing views, saw some vultures and made it back down in time for a lovely meal at the Refugio.

Day 3: unfortunately, after the exploits of day 2, we were both tired. Fortunately, it was a lovely day and the shop in Riglos sold ice cream. We lazed in the sun taking many photos of Andy and Charles climbing the normal route on the Mallo Puro (it was Charles's last day so they'd decided to push through the tiredness). Unfortunately (for them), we mischievously decided to steal their shoes. Fortunately (for them), it turns out I'm not very good at subterfuge, and tend to crack under the pressure of devious questions such as "what's in the bag?" I don't think I'm cut out for a career as a spy...

Mallos Puro (the pointy bit on the left). Andy and Charles are just reaching the top - can you see them?

Day 4: Charles had to leave, so Naomi and I teamed up with Andy to climb Moskitos, a seven pitch route on Mallo Visera. This is a sneaky route that gets you into some similar positions to the famous harder routes up this wall (Fiesta de Los Biceps and Zulu Demente - see Andy's blog), but weaves around to avoid most of the steepness so is a much more amenable grade (6b/6b+, depending on which guide you read). The first few pitches were really fun: some interesting crack climbing, followed by an airy traverse across to the 'Trone', a car-sized boulder improbably wedged two-thirds of the way up the tower.

Naomi on the traverse pitch of Moskitos

Unfortunately, the sun hit the crag at this point, and we'd all underestimated the effect of the heat on climbing performance. The crux pitch leaving the Trone was a bit of a struggle and I had to pull on pretty much all of the bolts to get up it. Fortunately...erm......I made it in the end, we didn't have to do a complicated abseil retreat, and I learned a valuable lesson about the importance of staying hydrated... The walk down from the top was spectacular.

We were ravenous when we got down, so enjoyed some well-earned tapas and ice cream at the bar, and watched some base jumpers being silly...

Day 5: exhausted! We drove to Santa Ana, near Lleida, intending to do some more conventional single-pitch sport climbing, but instead ended up eating tasty food and paddling in the (very cold) river.

Overall, Riglos was an experience - a spectacular place, and a very different style of climbing from what we were doing before. I left feeling very inspired to come back in the future, but will have to get a lot fitter first!!

Hiking in the Pallars Jussa

One of the things that makes being injured a bit less annoying is that it gives you time to do some other things that normally get pushed out by climbing.  One of these is hiking - I'd intended to do a bit of it on this trip, but up til now climbing and the associated faff had been taking up all our time.  As it turns out I almost couldn't have picked a better place to do it if I'd tried!

The county of Pallars Jussa is situated in the Iberian Pre-Pyrenees.  It's a beautiful landscape of Pre-Pyrenean mountain ranges split by deep, rocky valleys, with stunning views of the snow-capped Pyrenees themselves on a clear day.  The county consists of two main sections either side of the town of Tremp: Serra de Montsec on the southern edge, and Vall Fosca (the Dark Valley) in the north.  We've been based around Montsec so far because that's where Terradets is, but hopefully we'll get to explore north at some point too.

There's loads of well-signposted, waymarked footpaths round here - the map we picked up from the tourist info in Tremp describes over 50!  We've only done three (routes numbered 2, 6 and 1 from the map, respectively), but they were all lovely.

Barranc del Bosc (8.7 km): This was a pleasant ridge walk that took a couple of hours one afternoon.  It passes underneath the 500 m high rock face of Roca Regina, then climbs the hill beyond to gain a ridge with some lovely views.  According to the sign board at the top, it's a good place to see eagles.  Based on the pictures provided, I think I saw a short-toed eagle flying past.  Or it may have just been a buzzard - but since we both forgot to take cameras on this walk you'll just have to take my word for it...


El Castell de Mur (8.8 km): This was another pleasant afternoon walk, with the added bonus that it went past not one, but TWO medieval castles!  Starting from the small village of Guardia de Noguera, we climbed up the steep hillside to reach the first castle, Castell de Mur.

This was the bigger of the two, and has things to see inside and a little museum attached.  Unfortunately, it was all closed when we got there - unsurprisingly since their opening hours appeared to be only Saturdays and Sundays, 11.30-13.00.  There was a little interactive information screen outside though that provided information on many aspects of Catalunyan culture, history and gastronomy, including some traditional Catalan recipes.  I was particularly intrigued by this one - a Catalan version of haggis, I think:

Intrigued to try this...

The walk continued gently along a ridge to the second castle, Castell de Guardia.  This one was a lot smaller and more ruined, but you could go inside and climb up a ladder to the first floor.  I got to do a royal wave from the window, so it was totally worth it:

Royal wave...

We then headed back down to Guardia de Noguera and started enviously at what I assume is the local cider making setup:

Ermita de Sant Salvador and Portella Blanca: The final route was a longer one (I'm unsure of the exact distance but it took about 5 hours) that climbed all the way up to the ridge of the Montsec de Rubies and down the other side, via the Ermita de Sant Salvador del Bosc.  This was reached by a route called the Camí de les 100 Corbes - I naively assumed this meant 100 steps (I'm sure I've done walks in the UK before that have been called 'the path of X steps') - I thought '100 steps will be easy enough, and an efficient way to gain height'.  It turns out 'Corbes' actually means 'bends' - it actually translates as the path of 100 switchbacks!  When a path's named after the number of switchbacks it has, you know you're in for a slog...  I quickly lost count of the number of bends, but some helpful individual had marked the number left to go at regular intervals.

There were also little stone shrines dotted along the path every so often, each with a picture of a different saint in it.

The Ermita itself wasn't particularly impressive, just a bricked up stone building - I'd have been pretty disappointed if it had been the only reason for walking up there.  The views, on the other hand, were amazing!

After the Ermita, the route continued up to the ridge (via a few more switchbacks!), and then along this to the Portella Blanca.  I had no idea what this was going to be - it turned out to be a big notch in the cliff on the south side of the ridge that allowed you to get down.

I was struck by the contrast in the vegetation on the north and south sides of the range.  On the way up I'd been walking up rocky paths through deciduous woodland full of moss-covered trees, ivy, and little purple flowers.  On the south side we were back to a typically mediterranean landscape - pine trees, spiky bushes and lots and lots of rosemary).

The route described by the map unhelpfully stopped at the Portella Blanca, possibly because the ridge of the Montsec de Rubies marks the edge of the county - the way down was therefore someone else's problem!  The route joined the GR1 long distance footpath at this point though, so I followed that until I found a sign pointing back to Font de les Bagasses, where we'd left the van.

Long-distance walking potential:
The second walk we did (the one with the castles) coincided for a while with another route marked with a mysterious red '8' symbol. The mystery was revealed when we found a signboard at Castell de Mur. We'd come across El Camí, a relatively recent long distance footpath (parts of it are still under construction) with the ambitious aim of connecting together all sites of cultural, historical and ecological interest in the Catalan speaking regions. The Pallars Jussa contains a 160 km section of it. I had a look at the full route on their website later - it's somewhere between 4000 and 5000 km in total and forms a rough figure of eight (the reason for the '8' symbol). I was quite surprised just how far the Catalan speaking region extends - north to Perpignan and as far south as Alicante on the mainland, and over the sea to the Baleriac islands. The whole thing seems to have been put together by volunteers and funded by donations, so it's quite impressive. Definitely something I'd be interested in doing more of if I came back to this region - the 0.1% we've done so far was very nice!