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Riglos
Adventures in Spain with Steph Davis and Ian Mitchard - Part 1
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The Mallos de Riglos (the “mallets of Riglos") are towers of conglomerate stone (think smooth round cobbles wedged into cement), hundreds of feet tall, that rise straight above a small Spanish village of stone houses with sand-colored tile roofs and one church steeple. La Visera, the tallest tower, is 900 vertical feet tall. This area of Spain is a region known as Catalunya, and the Catalan people pride themselves on their culture and language, which is almost like a blend of Spanish and French. The Pyrenees mountains separate Catalunya from the border of France.
Riglos...
...is a paradise for climbers and BASE jumpers, and especially for people who like to do both! I climb a lot at Maple Canyon in Utah, a conglomerate area known for steep climbs and cobbles that may unexpectedly pop out in your hand. Riglos climbing is just like Maple, except 800 feet tall instead of 80.
kavu Day #1
Our first morning in Riglos, Ian and I did the grueling 8 minute hike to the base of La Cuchilla and climbed a bolted path of cobbles to the summit, 600 feet of pure fun! Two teams of Spanish climbers were on the routes just beside us, and we had fun taking pictures of them as we all climbed. Massive brown vultures who make their home in small caves in the mallos soared around and below us as we climbed.
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The top of the mallos is a beautiful limestone mountainscape, that leads you off the stone mountains, in and out of short forested sections, surrounded by gorgeous views in all directions. Doing the hike down showed us the trail we would take back up to jump. We grabbed some bread and olives and our BASE rigs, and ran back up the trail, just under an hour to the top of La Visera. The vultures showed us that the air was perfect for flying, and we jumped and landed just at sunset.
Friends make the world its best
I’ve known Jordi Salas for over 25 years, an amazing Catalan climber who lives just an hour away from Riglos. He came to meet us the next morning, with plans to climb La Pison, another of the largest towers….but he had a brand new puppy and I was dying to see her! So instead we chose to climb routes at the base, so we could hang out with the puppy, and we discovered that Riglos also has countless long, wonderful single pitch climbs, just like our home stomping ground of Maple Canyon. And the puppy got her name: Happy :) This little dog has massive feet, and I’m pretty sure she’s going to be one big dog when we see her again…
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When eating dinner at the one little bar and restaurant in Riglos, the slender pinnacle El Puro is perfectly framed through the front windows, and in fact the bar is named after it. From the guidebook in the bar, I could see it would be a real climbing adventure, not your standard climb straight up a cobbled face. The route goes up several pitches to reach the base of the skinny pillar which is attached to the side of La Pison, the larger tower. Then you wind around the front of the pillar and climb a few more pitches on the skinny side of the pillar to a very small summit. We had to climb El Puro!
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For our last day, we got up early and hiked up for another jump from La Visera in perfect, calm morning air, then packed our BASE rigs back up, and got the super alpine, noon o’clock start for El Puro: fortunately the 7 minute approach went quickly, and our rack consisted of 10 quickdraws and 6 long slings. We were ready to start climbing with no delay!
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The first few pitches were some of the craziest climbing I’ve ever done—the biggest cobbles I’ve ever grabbed in my life, up a dihedral system to steep that I could see the ground straight under my feet for 200 feet. It was like climbing some fantasy castle. We found ourselves in a dark, massive chimney of cobbles for a few more pitches, like Gollum’s cave, occasionally finding old threads to clip that other climbers had tied through holes in the rock. This route is very historic in Riglos climbing and took many attempts and a lot of route finding before it was climbed, and I could really feel the sense of climbing history and adventure as we made our way up the endless cobbled chimney feature.
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We reached the notch and emerged into howling wind. The last pitches up the thin exposed pillar were super atmospheric, especially in the wild winds that ramped up the feeling of adventure as we searched for bolts and tried to figure out the right path up the dizzying ocean of cobbles.
The summit...
...was the size of a kitchen table, and the cold wind made us ready to get to business and start figuring out how to get off this thing, so we quickly got ready for the second part of the adventure: rappelling from the other side. We’d been hoping to finish the climb in time to make a second BASE jump, for a super full day of adventure, but with this kind of wind, it was pretty clear that another jump wasn’t in the cards, and really we couldn’t ask for a more awesome day of adventure than what we’d had so far :)
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Thankfully, the ropes didn’t get stuck or blow around the sides of the pillar as we pulled them. We got back to the safety of Gollum’s cave and several more long rappels, and made it back to the ground with plenty of time to get back to the other El Puro for some cervezas and dinner! This was my second visit to Riglos, and I know I’ll be back very soon—it has become one of my favorite places in the world.
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