Sunny Siurana

Back in time to...

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

When we woke up in the morning in our campsite in Siurana, the first thing we here is one of the psyched Brits in the campsite next to ours saying "Azure sky! Not a cloud in sight! AZURE sky!". So Nick and I poke our heads out of the tent and see that, as usual, the Brits don't understand exactly what clouds are (I have seen a lot of forecasts in England that are "partly cloudy" with "100% cloud cover" -- what's "partly" about that?). The sky in Siurana isn't so much azure sky as it is mackerel sky. So I tell Nick that rain is coming in a day or two.

But today really is still quite sunny, despite the high clouds. So we start by going into the campsite's café/restaurant/reception and taking a look at the campground's guidebook with all the new routes in it, and copy a few of them down that are applicable to the areas we are going to today. So then we pack up and head to our first choice of crag near where we climbed yesterday. But when we get there, it's pretty intimidating -- it's on the side of a gorge and feels pretty exposed, and a lot of the 6s have pretty high first bolts with not-so-easy starts below them. Nick is feeling particularly unpsyched about this. So we took some photos but then decide that maybe we should see whether the other crag we had picked out as a good starting crag would be a better choice.

So we head over to Grau dels Masets, camì and oest. It takes us a little while to find the walk-in, which is down a dirt road for a bit before a not-entirely-obvious turnoff (we kept trying to turn off too soon), but eventually find the trail and make it down. Once we get there, we know that this crag is more our speed. There are toddlers, doggies, and Brits -- total gumby crag. Perfect. The bolts are closer together, the first bolts are lower, there is lots more shade, and the terrain isn't so steep that you think that if someone blows it before they get to the first bolt you'll both go tumbling to the bottom of the gorge. But there are still pretty views across the gorge.





We did an easy 6 at the eastern half of the crag to warm up and then, due to the gumby factor, moved over to Grau dels Masets (oest) so we could have a bit more space. We did a few good 6s over there, including one that I really liked called Rocky. Everything was in the 5.10 range, but pretty well spread out between .10a and .10d. I flashed everything (pinkpoint!); Nick almost onsighted everything but hung once or twice while grumbling about hanging draws and not having beta. Everything was long, but nothing was too much of a challenge for our 60m rope.



Then, we headed back to the eastern half and did one more 5+ there, but at this point it was actually already quite late in the day (crag-finding and new-route-copying took a lot of time), so then headed back out.





We get back to the campsite and cook dinner (well, Nick cooks while I shower). The weather is still sunny, but I hadn't liked the looks of some of the high clouds during the day. Nick, though, proved by induction that the weather would stay good tomorrow (it was good yesterday, and it was good today).

While we're cooking dinner, it starts to get significantly colder now that the sun is sinking, but it's still not bad.



We look at the guidebook some more to make plans for tomorrow, generally get organized, and head into the tent to play some more cards and go to bed.