Climbing in the Mountains of Spain

I am so lucky to have met a Spanish local named Emilio from the climbing wall at the University, because he has been kind enough to invite me on two different climbing trips to the mountains. I would not have been able to climb outside without his generosity, because it requires a knowledge of the area's camping and climbing spots, climbing gear, and a car to go on these types of trips. The first place we went was called La Pedriza. According to a friend of mine, this is the best place to climb near Madrid and I loved it.

We did some slab climbing, which is where the wall is slanted away from you and there are nothing but tiny holds throughout. This type of climbing is really great for me, because I am light and have a long reach, so I had a ton of fun! I flashed (did it on my first try) a route that was supposedly a 6b, which is roughly equivalent to 5.10 c/d and is up there with my most difficult climbs. I got these pictures from one of the girls that went with us to climb, and although they aren't great and a lot of them aren't of me, they can give you an idea of the location and the people I was climbing with.

Jose is waving

this is Emilio

This was our view from our climbing spot. Beautiful!

After we finished climbing, we went camping near a river by the mountains and it was so beautiful. The weather was perfect so we just slept on the ground in our sleeping bags.

The last time that we went out, we went to some mountains outside of a suburb of Madrid called Gestafe. This time we did crack climbing (which is where you have to utilize a long crack in the rock as your main source of hand and foot holds). This type of climbing is really difficult for me, because it is a bit painful sometimes since you have to jam your hands and feet into the crack to support your weight. But I was really happy to be able to work on this style of climbing and I did pretty well overall. Unfortunately, I have no pictures from this excursion but hopefully, I will have more pictures from future climbing excursions to share with you. And whenever Duke gets here, we are going to have so much fun climbing in Mallorca!!!