Tash ticks another 7a!

After a foggy start down in Montbrió, we got up above the murk on the way up the hill and it turned out to be a beautiful sunny day. In fact, sweating our way up the approach path to Racó de Missa it became apparent that it was going to be a hot one!

Tash had one aim for the day - a 7a that she's tried every time we went there and had been getting closer and closer to each time. But it's been a while since we last went to Racó de Missa, so she was a bit worried that she'd have forgotten the moves, especially as she'd never done it all in one go on a top-rope before. Ideally, we'd have warmed up well before she had a proper go but with the temperatures increasing and the wall in full sun all day she decided just to go for it immediately. It was a proper fight as she got really pumped but somehow she hung on and ticked it - as her warm-up! I wish I could improve as quickly as her!

By now it was seriously warm and all the routes I wanted to get on in the main cave were still seeping a bit, so we went round to the right-hand sector which was still in the shade. I'd never climbed here before, so it was nice to get on something new and with a slight breeze the conditions were perfect at first. Having never seen anyone climbing round on this side of the cave, it came as no surprise that the routes were totally unchalked and the rock still 'settling down'! I warmed up on a 6c+ and then a 7a+ which went through some steep ground on fairly worrying rock.

After this, I saw a new route that wasn't even in the latest guide - the bolts were brand new and incredibly shiny with the stickers still on them, so it must have been put up very recently!

The route name painted at the bottom - note the length & number of draws needed!

The route went up an amazing concave piece of wall, starting with a 6b+ slab and then gradually steepening and steepening until you got to the overhanging headwall of the 7c extension. I wasn't expecting much from the onsight, considering how hard the '6b+' first pitch was, but the extension looked so good I just had to try. The climbing on it was fantastic and although it wasn't exactly loose, the holds were just slightly crumbly and dirty (as you'd expect from such a new route) so as well as finding the best pockets you had to test and re-test everything as you went - a very slow process! I was really pleased to get through quite a few sections of hard climbing, despite some exciting moments when a foothold or handhold crumbled on me. But after over an hour of climbing on the overhanging section in full sun, I got to the steepest part just below the top feeling pretty pumped. It wasn't helped by the fact that I was now hauling about 50m of rope up as I went and was near impossible to pull the rope up to clip! I went up and down from the shakeout to the mono moves through the bulge several times, before finally commiting to it, but when I missed a good hidden pocket and slapped for some slopey pockets over the bulge instead, I was off! Grrr. I was pretty disappointed to have fallen so close to the top after fighting for so long on it, but that's the way it goes sometimes! After pulling back on I found the hidden pocket and realised I was just one move from a huge jug before an easy finish! Close but no cigar. By this point I literally had nothing left and couldn't contemplate a redpoint attempt so I stripped it and left it for another day. The route is truly amazing - yet another HUGE Montsant classic, and when it gets a bit more traffic to clean it up it'll be a very popular one I think. I was totally destroyed when I got down and needed some time to recover, so we went round for Tash to do some more climbing. She on-sighted a brilliant 6c but was too tired to finish the next route off, so I went up to get the draws out. At 6b+ this felt hard enough, so I might need a rest day tomorrow to recover properly!

The right-hand side of Racó de Missa - home to some more HUGE routes.