For the last week a Rockfax team has been in the Costa Blanca getting photos and checking out some new crags for the next edition of the Rockfax guidebook. It is a tough job but someone has to do it!
The book is ‘work in progress’ and the primary author – Chris Craggs – has already done a sterling job with checking and re-photographing all the existing crags, as well as discovering some new venues. It will be put together during the next 12 months and hopefully available in the autumn of 2012.
For this latest research trip the weather was incredibly warm – we clocked 39 degrees on the car thermometer one day – and we ended up spending a lot of time searching for shade. The general pattern was visit a south-facing crag in the morning and climb a few routes and get some photos, until we couldn’t bear the heat any more. Then it was off to search for shade.
Overall it was a really successful week with several excellent new crags visited, and some old venues checked over. Olta and Toix East certainly have much new stuff on offer for the easier routes, and we will be including this in the new guide. There are also some good new harder sectors that have been developed.
The research team on this occasion was Mark Glaister, Stephen Horne, Paul Cox and Alan James, and we stayed at the delightful Bouganvilla in Calpe for the week.
Chris Craggs will be working on the book through the winter so get any feedback you have in the system – Costa Blanca Route Database
michael burrows
I was at SIERRA DE TOIX este last week and there had been 4 new grade 5 routes put up (30m) left of Hetti, also several lower grade and multipitch routes in that area. There was a guy there with a topo of the routes.