An epic day out on the Sa Gubia wall on Mallorca

Climbing the 7 (or 8) pitch Albahida trad climb on Mallorca

The island of Mallorca is known for the many outdoorsy things you can do while enjoying the mediterranean climate - from cycling to hiking and climbing there is tons of stuff to do. Among rock climbers it might be best known for deep water solo spots, which allow to climb above water so that falling gets you wet but does not break your bones. However there are many sport climbing (aka roped climbing) crags as well and even a few areas with multi pitch routes (more or less several routes stack on top of each other).

My girlfriend and I started rock climbing in April of 2019 after some sessions in boulder halls and many a scramble during outings in the mountains. As the sport climbing visits to the local crags became somewhat of a regular thing for us I decided that doing a bit of training to check whether the stuff we taught ourselves was correct and to maybe learn a bit more would make sense - so I did a weeklong training course in the german Alps the summer that also covered multi pitch climbing (luckily this course confirmed that what we had done so far was totally correct and safe). As the year and our skills progressed climbing became one of “our things”.

So when a friend from Germany, who is a regular at his local climbing gym, visited us in December the prospect of doing one of the famous longer routes on the island did not seem as daunting as it would have only a few months earlier. We selected maybe the most famous multi pitch on the island as our target and after a few days of sport climbing we jumped in the car at the crack of dawn to make sure we had as many hours of light as possible for our adventure.

The route in question is named Albahida and covers about 230 vertical meters in seven pitches. It is rated 4c in the French system and is partly protected by bolts (which means that you need to place some protective pieces yourself - upping the difficulty). The route transitions into an exposed ridge after the “real climbing” that covers some 200 vertical meters more before you reach the peak from which you can walk off. Based on these numbers and the images we had seen of the climb we were confident that we would make it up but had some nerves because this was our first “big” climb.

We reached the foot of the climb in good time, tied in, checked out gear and had on final chat on whether we really wanted to do this thing. With the answer being “yes” led the first easy pitch (~40m) and had to place all protection up to the first belay station - so far so good. As is usually done we switch leads and my partner smashed pitch 2, again with few bolts but protectable.

Number 3 was mine again and this is where things went a bit of plan. I followed a line of bolts (those suckers draw you towards them like magnets) which led me off the correct line onto a more difficult route (rated 5b - I tipcally would not onsight a 5b) *. Having noticed my error quite late I traversed back right to a hanging belay that was just a few meters higher than where we should have been. After reuniting at this belay we discussed how to deal with the situation and decided that Jost would go up and then further right so that we would rejoin the correct line.

He attacked that fourth pitch and did find the next correct belay station but it took quite some time and he had to just almost all the rope while I screamed my lungs out to give him info on how far he could still go before he would reach the end of the rope.

Back on the correct route I started Pitch 5 which was supposed to be the hardest  (4c) but turned out to be quite easy. Looking at the clock we knew that our earlier error had cost os a lot of time and Jost carried on with the sixth pitch which turned out to be not too bad.

From where we were now we had a good view of the last maybe 70m of climbing and battled our way up pitch 7. We were either exhausted or a bit off track again because this one felt much harder than it was supposed to be according to the guide book.

The final pitch up to the ridge luckily did not pose a challenge and we switched to a simul-climbing / short rope setup quickly as we only had an hour of sunlight left to cover the ridge to the summit. The sun was dipping behind the peaks of the mountains the moment we stepped onto the summit - truly a fitting end to the difficulties of that days epic.

During the walk off in the dark we took stock of the day: Even though we spend 7 hours plus on the wall and on the ridge due to our route finding errors we were happy with our accomplishment and the fact that we had successfully tested our little rope partnership under “real world conditions”.

* Make sure that you know where to go on this wall as there are bolted routes also which are sometimes significantly harder and might not lead to the ridge but have to be rapelled off!

Adventurers: Jost and Bengt