It was
really cold and the rough wind made it even worse. Frozen hands and toes during
the day and no WIFI and horrible matrasses in the apartment during the night made
for a tough week.
Some of the
sectors were closed due to bird nesting season but the open sectors had plenty
of nice boulders to enjoy. The bouldering is different from Fontainebleau. It
feels much more like bouldering in the gym: big holds and powerful moves. The
most technical boulders can be found in the sectors Aeroline and Arrastradero
while Techos as the name suggests is full with huge roofs.
I did a lot
of 6C and 7A grade boulders. This holiday was about volume more than doing
projects. It was simply too cold for that. However, I tried some more difficult
boulders which felt not completely impossible so I definitively want to return.
Some of the
most beautiful boulders I did this holiday were: Techo Don Pepo, Spider Pig,
Tonico Efervesdente, Brutal and Illusion.
Some
pictures of these boulders can be found HERE and also see the movie below.
If you plan
on going to Albarracin, there are now a number of topo’s.
- The 2008 Röker E Bloc bouldertopo Espana which lists apart from Albarracin a number of other bouldering area’s in Spain, so this is nice when you are touring the country.
- The 2011 hardcover from Jurgen Schmeiβer is very nice with good pictures which makes it easy to find the lines to the boulder problems and it has descriptions to some of the problems.
- The 2014 guidebook about Albarracin Bouldering by Robert Palmer has crappy pictures so it is hard to find the right line to the boulders.
- The 2013 guide from NOROPE.ES is also nice however some boulders are not graded and not named but are coded.
The latter
two contain new sectors that are not listed in the two older topo’s. What is confusing
is that all these topo’s do not seem to agree on naming and grading of a large
number of the boulders.