© Miguel Catita
Some of you may wonder what Alexander Megos has been up to lately. So did I... well I knew he was on vacation in Spain, but no more than that. To find out, I asked him if he felt like telling us a little bit about his holidays, and here it is:
After a one-week stay in France in the areas "St. Leger" and "Claret" to climb some of the old school classics the trip brought us to Spain!
There is still one thing I want to mention about the old school classics in these two areas in France. They are f***ing hard! There where some 8b+ which felt harder than some of the 8c+ I did afterwards in Spain... I don't want to say, that there are holiday grades in Spain, I just wanted to say that there are some pretty hard 8b+ in some old school areas. And they are worth to be climbed, because they are really good! No matter if hard for the grade or not...
Back to Spain. This time I had my focus more on Margalef, as there was not too much left in Siurana. But anyway we just had around 10 days in Margalef, because afterwards we had booked one week El Chorro, climbing in the sun.
The main focus in Margalef were the sectors "Espadelles" and "El Laboratori". I kind of have the feeling that this trip was the "2. Go-trip", because I did a lot of the hard routes on my second attempt. Here some of the ascents in Margalef:
- Speed Baby 8b+ (2. Go)
- 24 Hours Party People 8c (2. Go)
- Los Ultimos Vampiros Hippies 8c (3. Go)
- Pal Norte 8c+ (2. Go)
- Pal Oeste 8c+ (2. Go)
- Pal Este 8c (1. Go)
- Super Vixens 8b+/c (2. Go)
- Cocaina pura y dura 8b+/c (2. Go)
- Bumaye 8c+ (2. Go)
- La Ley Innata 8c+/9a (2. Go)
I had a pretty good day on the 2nd of January, where I did "Bumaye" and "La Ley Innata" both second try within one hour, although it was already my 6th climbing day in a row...
And there is another route I climbed, which took me 4 tries. The route is called "La Bongada" and when it was a project they thought it might be around 8c+/9a. Then Ramon [Julian Puigblanque] made the first ascent of it calling it 8c... I repeated it and would definitely suggest 9a. It has nothing to do with 8c, Ramon might be just too strong ;-). When you compare it to some of the 8c+ in the same sector, it is a hard 9a. But for me it felt like a normal 9a.
The time was over quite fast, so after 10 days we took the plane from Barcelona to Malaga, to enjoy one week of warm weather in El Chorro.
During our stay in El Chorro we also checked out the "Chilam Balam Cave" for 2 days. Unfortunately we didn't have a guidebook so we just tried what looked nice. That was a funny game. Some days later we found out, how hard some of the routes were, which we climbed over there:
- La Rubia 8c+ (2. Go)- Garbo 8c (2. Go) (this is the first pitch of Adam Ondras "Planta de Shiva")
- ????? 8c (onsight)
I also did one 8c onsight, which actually is my first 8c onsight ever [although he has onsighted 9a and flashed 8c+ already]. Unfortunately I couldn't find out the name of the route...
But there is still a lot to do, so there will be definitely going another trip to this cave!
Alexander Megos is sponsored by: Patagonia, DMM, Entre-Prises ,Tenaya and Blue Water Ropes,
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