As high as you are allowed to go

Scrambling up Puig de Massanella on Mallorca

If you have been following our antics you might have noticed that there are quite a few trips that happened on the mediterranean island of Mallorca - this place just keeps on giving and I still have not seen all of it. This time the goal was to climb the second highest mountain on the island, the Puig de Massanella (1.330m n.n.) - which is also the highest point that is accessible without signing for the Spanish military as the Puig Major (1.400m n.n.) is a restricted area used for a long range radar station.

Massanella can be scaled using three different routes: Two of which are testing from an endurance point of view but not technical and a third one going directly up the final 50m of the north face which includes quite a bit of scrambling - guess which one we took.

We started our hike from the Lluc monastery at 450m over sea level and followed the famous GR221 hiking trail up to 1.050m - The ascent is steady but gets ye old engine running. From there we made a quick detour up the Puig d'en Galileu (1.200m) which gives you a fantastic view over the whole northern Tramuntana, the island as a whole and the remaining route towards Massanella. Next we walked into the valley and up to the base of the scrambling ascent of days goal. Standing some 180m below the peak the rest of the route looked quite daunting but we saw a two other people in the wall and we decided to stick to our plan.

The first maybe 70m of remaining altitude gain are dealt with by walking up a steep slope. After that you have to scramble up the wall in three distinct phases. Firstly up towards a horizontal ledge, secondly along a ledge and finally up a small chimney towards the top. None of the climby parts are difficult as such but mistakes might lead to a 20-40m fall - So small risk / high impact.

Standing on top of the Puig on a day with good visibility gives you a 360 degree view of Mallorca with only the 100m higher Puig Major being more prominent. We took some time to take pictures and rest a little before we started our descent on the opposite side of the mountain. By coincidence we bumped into the other two people that used the scrambling route before us and joined up with them for the walk down towards the old pilgrim way towards Lluc and finally back to our car.

Adventurers: Jost and Bengt