UKC

Hi,
Some friends and I are planning an early season trip to the Med around March for around a week. Nothing too strenuous, low to medium grade stuff to get warmed up for the year.

I've started looking at Malta as a destination but from what I can understand it is mainly trad climbing. Prefer trad personally, but for trip abroad it's a lot easier to do sport and save the hassle (and baggage expense) of transporting a rack. What I'm not clear on is the extent of sport routes in Malta.

How may routes are there? Grade profile? Is it enough to keep 3/4 blokes entertained for a week?

I've spotted the updated guide for Malta, looks very good quality, but it's a bit expensive for a speculative purchase.

Anyone got good intelligence on the area and the extent of bolted routes? Or creative suggestions for transporting a trad rack without too much expense?

In reply to colinmcmanus: I was just over for the holidays, and what I can say is that there's plenty of new sports routes being put up in the last year. Not sure whether an updated guidebook has been published - think the last edition was 2007, so there's a lot of new routes not in that book.

The major sports venue is Wied Babu close to Zurrieq, with routes for everyone there on both sides of the valley. Other worthy crags would be Lapsi and along the Victoria Lines in the North. There is also plenty of bolts on Gozo (the neighbouring island).

climbmalta.com and www.maltaclimbingclub.com list a lot of the bolting updates - can try contacting them too.

I'm sure there'll be plenty to keep you occupied for a week!

In reply to colinmcmanus: Not many details but lots of good pics here:
http://steviehaston.blogspot.ch/

In reply to colinmcmanus:

I don't think a trad rack adds much weight. 3kg or 4kg maybe. If you are flying out with a load of quickdraws, a long rope, harnesses, shoes, helmets (?) then you'll have to put that lot into the hold anyway (whether as main baggage or additional sport). Some nuts and a few cams and slings aren't going to add too much unless you go crazy with monster cams.

that said, even low grade trad in Malta would benefit from a set of tri-cams so that's where your trad expense will lie!