My time in Siurana has come to an end and i am now in the north of France after attending a tour of the WW1 Western Front. It is definitely a major contrast moving from a climbing environment in the south, full of carefree young travelers, to the north around where the front was located. The muddy fields here are full of the dead of similar age people who were born into the wrong generation. It seems a ridiculous waste of life and unbelievable people would consider fighting like that.
In the last few weeks at Siurana I didn't end up focusing on the projects I had picked out as I kept getting distracted by the wealth of classics at every crag. Margalef is also nearby and was a popular destination for our crew due to the different style of climbing it offered. The steep pocket pulling conglomerate terrain felt a lot more like gym climbing and due to the pebbles everywhere you where able to put your feet almost anywhere. This style of climbing suited me much more than the reachy vertical crimp climbing at Siurana.
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| Aeroplastica 7c+/28 at Margalef. Photos Calum Forsyth. |
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| Lost in a sea of pockets on Aeroplastica. |
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| Peanut Gallery. |
I felt a good improvement in my onsighting which comes from trying a quantity of routes. I managed a 7c+ onsight which may have been soft but its hard to tell as the crux suits shorties and anyone with a bit of height struggle. All up for the trip I lost count of the routes up to 8b+(32) I tried. The tally for routes I actually did came to 22. 3x7a+, 5x7b, 5x7b+, 2x7c, 5x7c+, 2x8a.
Soon i will be at St Leger where i am going to force myself to not get distracted and actually focus on projecting. This can be frustrating but I feel it is also the best way for me to improve from where i am currently at. Some young Aussie talent in the form of Will Bartlett from Tasmania will also be joining me so there should be no shortage of hard routes being crushed. Till then...
