Kohti valoa / Photoblog

At least that was our plan.

Puig Campana.

Espolon Central is a 13-pitch trad route following a large arete in the middle of the main face. Even though the route is not hard, it's a long day out climbing. We decided to take an early start after reading horror stories of epic descents in the dark.

I woke up 6 AM after four hours of sleep with a fever and strange inflammatory pain in my right wrist. I started the day with a comforting painkiller cocktail and tried to force myself to eat a cheese bagel before our departure. We had packed all our gear the previous evening so that we could leave early. Teijo was coughing up air con phlegm and Puise was mostly grunting some senseless words while trying to recover from the military wakeup. Miika was at the table surrounded by wine bottles from the previous night and listening to Edith Piaf's ‘Non, Je ne regrette rien’. I knew it was going to be a legendary ascent.

We gunned our French space wagon through the morning mist in record time and parked the car as close to the mountain as possible somewhere outside Finestrat. We racked up, put our headlamps on and started the stopwatch. It was 7 AM and one other team was already ahead of us hiking to the base of the route. 

We watched the mountain to change its colour from shining white in moonlight to burning red during the first rays of the new rising sun. We didn't hurry too much and enjoyed the first hour of the morning in dreamlike surroundings while trekking through the vast plateau below the south face. Finally we reached the wide ledge below the face where the route starts.

I took the lead and wasn't too sure where we should head first. The first three pitches looked almost scrambling but I wanted to make sure that we are on the route. I asked for the topo and after a short silence realized that we must climb blind. Naturally we left the topo in the trunk of our car. After some cursing we tried to memorize the route from the ground. There shouldn't be any problems as the route follows an obvious ridge all the way to the top.

I started to climb the first pitch and after 30m was already lost. I missed the first belay and decided to climb the full rope length to link the first three pitches into two. When I was out of rope, I placed one C4 behind a big block and belayed Puise off my harness. The first two pitches proved to be so easy that we should have simul climbed the start to save time. There's not much to mention about the second pitch connecting the original 2 and 3. It didn't look too challenging so I decided the climb outside the ridge to gain some exposure. I finished the pitch when I arrived to a large ledge while fighting against enormous rope drag. Puise finished the pitch in no time and soon we stood at the ledge without any idea where to go next.

We spotted some old threads fixed to a tree some 40m to our right that probably was meant to be the belay after the third pitch. That would have meant an extra traverse pitch to the right so we decided to climb straight up. What we didn’t know then was that the real Espolon Central actually traversed more right after the tree, out of the wide gully where we were heading. Surprisingly I could only fix some unhealthy placements for the next off-route pitch and Puise was happy as ever cleaning the route as most of the pieces were already hanging free in the rope when he seconded the pitch.

At this point I managed to see Teijo and Miika for the first time after starting the ascent. They were one pitch behind arriving to the large ledge just below us. The fourth pitch was actually good climbing with a nice hand-jam crack and easy traverse to the right. I started to have doubts about our route as the moves that followed were outside the grade of Espolon Central.

I fixed the next belay to a large tree and tried to look for the correct line while Puise was working at the pitch below. We had three options, easy looking face on the left, very interesting gully and a traverse to the right behind the arête.  I ruled out the face and traverse and decided to try the gully. First we ate some snacks and confirmed our heavy and slow approach. We really had to climb faster to leave the mountain before dark.

After negotiating the first moves of the pitch I suddenly found myself stuck below a section without any possibilities of safe placements. It looked harder than any of the pitches on Espolon Central, so I decided to skip the opportunity to go solo on a grade six section. I wandered more left and tried to climb back to the easy face on the left. Even though we were climbing with double ropes I had to prepare a belay after traversing some 25m due to a massive drag from the rope. Another hour lost while hanging on a suspect anchor and searching for a way up.

When Puise got me on belay I was eager to move on as fast as possible to save time. I quickly started off, climbed a few moves and stopped to a gaston move to prepare the first piece of pro. When I was searching for a proper place to fix my cam, my left hand hold suddenly broke off. I managed to hold my weight somehow with my right hand but thrashed my ankle pretty badly to a sharp corner of the rock. I looked at the blood dripping down my leg and listened Miika shouting from the previous pitch why the hell are we traversing back to the left as we should be heading straight up. I had no idea what to do next.

Just then we managed to hear some other climbers shouting to each other some 100 m above us. I couldn’t see them but tried to figure out a possible route up to the large ledge where the shouts where coming from. After I carefully climbed a section of bad loose rock, I found a nice crack up to a small ledge and finished the pitch to crazy tree that was more like chair hanging above 200m of air.  I enjoyed the magnificent view and the new blood-red colour of our blue rope while Puise was making good progress on the pitch.

Next long pitch to the large ledge was an obvious technical slab with goods holds and terrible protection. All the pieces were more or less mental, consisting of old threads fixed to razor-sharp rock formations and rusty pitons that had seen better days. I tried to fix some wires on the way but understood after a couple of 10m runouts that the most important piece of protection is your own ability to climb at a certain level and trust yourself while staying focused on the route. I knew we all could easily solo all the pitches, so I wasn’t too worried as long as we stayed somewhere close to the original Espolon Central. The ledge turned out to be large enough to sit down and recover a while.

Just as we sat down a Spanish guide topped out the same pitch and pulled his client up to the ledge. We let them pass and decided to navigate the same line up to the top. Of course we didn’t bother asking if they are on the same classic we were searching for and immediately started off when the client finished the next pitch with some nice falls at the crux section. When I reached the crux I knew we were somewhere else than on the classic arête but decided to go for it. The pitch was good, a nice technical dihedral with sensitive moves that were followed by a small roof. As soon as I had traversed past the roof I saw the next belay stand. A small flake-ish block that was packed with old worn-out weather-beaten threads.  I fixed my own slings and it was pure horror even to hang from the anchor. All could do was to shout, “Don’t fall off!” when Puise was ready to start the pitch. Just when he was going for the first moves I saw a bombproof bolted anchor behind the bulge in front of me. I let go of the alpine ethics and quickly prepared a new anchor point to secure the pitch without any extra heartbeats.

The next two pitches were just perfect climbing. Very exposed and adventurous. We could still hear the guide giving hard time to his slow client, so it was easy to follow the exposed ridge to the last final pitch. We were racing against time but I still managed to shoot a few pictures while Puise was pulling himself up. It was 5.15 PM and we had already spent more than eight hours on the wall. Exhausted, dehydrated and hallucinating about triple Whoppers, I decided to climb the full rope length hoping to reach the top.

5.45 PM we were standing at the top of the route and looking at the amazing Mediterranean panorama view. Sun was setting over the mountains and colouring everything in dark red shades. We stayed at the top for some time and encouraged ourselves to start the descent by finishing what was left from the celebrated new-year’s-eve Chartreuse. Tired and happy.

The descent was pure madness. We had 30 minutes left before the darkness would set in and had to traverse the whole mountain face to a huge gully that would allow a safe descent. The descent started with a strange boulder problem that had to be down-climbed. It was equipped with thin via-ferrata-like cables that would probably hurt you even more if you found yourself flying down from the ledge. It was difficult enough without the big backpack and I looked in terror when Teijo and Puise negotiated the moves while carrying our rucksacks. They finished the step without problems and we continued our journey towards the gully.

After scrambling for some time I noticed that Puise and Teijo needed some time to work on the difficult grounds with their packs and Miika was waiting for them to show the way. It was getting dark and naturally we had only three Petzl lamps with us. I decided to let Puise use my lamp because it was inside the backpack and started to descend faster. I wanted to get the hell out of the mountain and reach the gully before the complete darkness would reach us. I followed the frequent cairns on the way as it was already too dark to see the red painted dots that would lead the way to the gully.

Suddenly it was pitch-black and I was down-climbing some serious sections in moonlight. I had no idea about the others but managed to see the gully somewhere below me. It was already impossible to follow the route so I just tried to look for a place to abseil down as I was carrying the other pair of our double ropes. After down-climbing a scary dihedral I ended up to a small ledge that was followed by a 40m drop to the gully. I guess I wasn’t the only one getting lost on the way down as there was two Messner-era pitons hammered to the rock that have probably been used to abseil down. The problem was that the rusty metal anchors were older than me.

When I was playing this fascinating mental game with myself whether to trust the pitons or not I heard Miika shouting from below: “What are you doing up there, just traverse to the left and there’s a path down”.  I quickly climbed up the dihedral and scrambled some steep sections to the actual path. In no time I reached the gully and we started the long and tedious descent back to the valley. The gully was covered with millions of small white rocks illuminated by the moonlight that created a magical atmosphere for the rest of the journey.

I stopped the stopwatch when we reached the car. We had been away 11 hours and 55 minutes. We spent 1,5 hours for the approach, lost 1h during the extra traverse, spent 1h waiting for the guide to pass and another 2h for the descent. The total climbing time was therefore between 6-7 hours.

Probably the worst recorded time since the first ascent of mountain but it really doesn’t matter. There are other reasons for climbing long alpine routes. It’s the excitement on the way and the feeling when you have reached your goal and returned safely back to the starting point.

Adventure.

Racking up.