Mont Rebei

I always liked to climb in big walls, so when Chris asked me if I want to join him on Mont Rebei expedition where he had made crazy hard route some years ago, I was more than happy to take that chance. On the pictures the wall looked amazing and I couldn’t wait to get there.

Aragon on the left, Catalonia on the right

First view of on the wall

Congots de Mont Rebei is on the border between Aragon and Catalonia, separated by the river. The approach is on the Catalonian side and you need to walk on a nice path for about an hour and then we could see the wall we wanted to climb in. It was on the other side of the river. Joder. Without the boat you need to continue another kilometer to get to the bridge and then return on the Aragon side back to the wall without any paths. Then you need to climb 2 pitches of another route, and walk down on the other side to get to the base of the wall and you can finally start climbing. Luckily some nice people pick us up with a kayak and took us around the corner so we could skip this climbing and descending part to the wall and it saved us a lot of time. Next time we returned with a boat. Mucho mejor.

Monster of Mont Rebei

Kayaking is easier than walking

Route starts with a nice 70m long 6c with a not may protection in it and then you arrive to a big ledge where we made our base camp. From here on the real climbing starts. Overhanging wall with small crimps and warming up in 9a is an amazing experience. The pitch is just barely possible so we needed to work a lot to make all the moves. Next is easier 8b pitch with small one finger pockets and long moves. If you don’t like monos, forget about this route J

Second pitch (first from base camp)

Crux

Perfect cripms

I still need to figure out how to do 2 moves

Last hard move of the pitch, jump, of coarse 

Now you arrive to another “big and comfortable” ledge where you can relax a bit. From here it starts the best part of the climb. Long technical moves, small holds and even smaller footholds. I like this pitch, even though it’s almost impossible to make two good tries in it in one day. 5^th pitch we didn’t try a lot. It has a crazy sideways jump from micro crimps in it. But to work it out we left it for the next time.

3rd pitch is easier

No rest here

I like this place

To get to the top of the wall we are still missing two more hard pitches and I hope we’ll get there soon. Hopefully on the next expedition.

From the second ledge

On our small fancy approach boat

Joe Mama 9a+

Soon after I came to Spain I decided I want to climb one hard route. Chris was trying a cool looking project and it was not hard to convince me to try it as well. It was something new for me to focus on just one project but if I wanted to do it, there was no other way. Luckily I liked a route a lot and I had no problem climbing it for warm up, serious try and cool down.

Joe Mama starts with an easy section with big holds and some crimps which is perfect for warming up. After this part you have a quite good rest and then there is the first hard section with some underclins and long moves and in the end technical reachy traverse to a “good rest” where at the beginning I was not able to rest at all. Up to here the route could be already graded 8c or 8c+ but the hard part was just starting. Few long moves brings you to the main crux of the route with a crazy high dropknee, one final clip and then some small crimps with bad foot holds until the final jump to a big jug. Few more easy moves and the chain is there.

Amazing power endurance route which doesn’t let you rest until the end and I’m happy I finally put some more effort in a single route and climb it at the end.

More you can read on: Rokice link: http://www.rockandice.com/climbing-news/interview-klemen-becan-on-the-first-ascent-of-joe-mama-5-15a

Or even better check out this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJ1sXHaxspM