Costa Blanca (part 1)
After completing an outdoor lead climbing course in May 2018, I was hooked! Back home in the Netherlands I decided to start sport climbing once a week at various gyms. Soon I realized that climbing routes requires quite a different mind set than doing boulder problems. The climb is much more of a 'process' requiring efficiency and fast decision making. In order to 'automate' this process as much as possible I decided to go on a coaching week in Spain (see also Part 2).
So my first real sport climbing trip
was to Costa Blanca (Spain) in December 2018. I was looking for a climbing course somewhere in Southern Europe, where the sun still shines. I decided to go for the coaching week offered by The Orange House in Finestrat. My climbing instructor was Richard Mayfield who is a vastly experienced climber and coach. The course consisted of 5 climbing days with 1 day rest in between.
The first 2 days were by far the most exhausting. We mostly climbed routes between 6a-6c not higher than 30m but some of them still took more than 25 minutes (!) to climb which is of course ridiculous. For Rich it was quite obvious than I was lacking outdoor sport climbing experience and in order to climb harder routes I had to work on my climbing efficiency. Which means less hesitation and indecisiveness when holding to a small crimp and a side pull and feeling my forearms getting more and more pumped with every second I was standing in this position.
On the third day we went to a smaller crag along the road just outside Sella. The routes were quite bouldery and between 10-15m high. It was the perfect crag to build up some confidence on the rock and try to climb as efficient as possible. I managed to onsight all the 'easy' routes (i.e. <6c). At the end of the day we went to a much bigger, steeper crag uphill. I was already pretty tired so after climbing 1 route we called it a day.
After 3 days of climbing
I was completely wrecked and definitely deserved a rest day! Luckily the weather was still perfect so I prepared some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and went off hiking. There were 2 options: either climb up the Puig Campana peak, second highest of Valencia province, or do the round trek. I went for the second option as I still wanted to be fit for the next two days of climbing.
The hike was really pleasant and scenic. It was getting hotter and hotter but fortunately after 1 or 2 hours the sun got blocked by the peak which was quite refreshing :). In total I walked around 20km on my rest day although the hike itself was only around 12km.
Go to Part 2!
