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| Line description from Escalatroncs |
Now it was Xavi's turn, but he didn't have a good feeling. He repeatedly got stuck and he too had to cheat (help himself with the rope) in order to get to the belay station. Once he joined me, he told me that he wasn't in the mood to go for the second pitch rated V-, not even as the second climber.
That didn't bother me. I thought it would be a good idea to practice the first pitch some more times, so that the both of us could gain some more confidence before returning another day to summit the Bishop's Belly.
After we'd done some modifications, so that we could secure us top-rope-style, we abseiled and each of us tried the line 2 or 3 more times. Now it was Xavi who did better than me. Once he even got to the belay station without cheating! I, on the other hand, didn't find my way up again. Since following the line meant to make a turn to the right first for later going left again, a fall would have caused a tremendous pendulum. I tried different approaches instead, but without actually getting to the station. After a while we
had enough and decided to have a look at some other rocks nearby. Our way
passed by the Sant Benet's Hermitage abd then we directly went to La Mòmia, la Momieta
and l'Elefant, all of them quite impressive rock columns.
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| Sant Benet |
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| Mummy and Little Mummy |
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| An Elephant peering from behind a rock |
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| Viewpoint |
There were climbers on the Mummy as well as on the Elephant, on the latter even two rope teams could be made out. I don't know whether those rock formations are prohibitively difficult to summit (I suppose they are), but it must be quite a satisfaction to stand on either of them.
Once between the Elephant and the Mummy, we found an interesting hiking path we considered worth following which was not easy, and since we lost it repeatedly, we got to some amazing viewpoints where our path was cut by deep falls.
On the far side of the Elephant Rock, we encountered a family of mountain goats, the he-goat curiosly watching us for a long while, as did we.
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| Montserrat's monestry's parking from above |
At one point further on we were right above our car and it would have been great to find some abseil installation there.
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| Another good viewpoint |
Our way back led us by another hermitage, built inbetween two rock columns. From there, a stairway leads down to the monestry, but we didn't take it, because the access was restricted by a chain. Probably, once down the stairs, we would have found a closed door. Had we had left more time we would have given it a chance, but daylight hours were scarce.
Later on, however we took a deveation from the main path. A ravine that directly led into the direction of the monestry was too promising not to try it. The further we followed it down the more difficult progress got and after some down scrambling entangled in dense pricking vegetation, we finally stood at a vertical drop above one of the buildings pertaining to the monestry. There even was a belay station, so that we could have rapeled down!
Anyway, we didn't. It would have been great to step down from heaven as Jesus did years before, but the drop surely was more than 60m deep, meaning that we had to find at least one other intermediae belay and we didn't have the necessary guts... Up again and back to the main path!
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| Almost up again |
Although we hadn't done much climbing, an utterly funny and interesting day we'd had.
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