Exploring the beautiful and slightly technical Cova de na Mitjana

Putting the rope skills to use in a different fashion
Mallorca has many caves of various sizes and ease of access. Some, like the Cuevas de Porto Cristo, are fully developed tourist locations, while others, like the Cova Tancada, can be reached and entered without technical skills. Beyond that there are many many more that need some level of technical skill to be enjoyed - from a simple rappel to full scale spelunking tools and skills.

Our goal was on the only slightly technical end of the scale: The Cova de na Mitjana (also called Cova d´en Gosti Lladre) at the very edge of the sea just north of Canyamel. At a previous visit to the entrance and the first chamber I had learned that to enter the proper cave you need to rappel down about 6 meters and get back up on the rope to get out again (not being too sketchy I had then decided to only do this with a partner - getting stuck down there would be really bad, as the cave is almost never visited).

So on a rather cold, windy and overcast January day Wolf and I hiked about 45 minutes from Canyamel over the Talaia Nova and down the other side towards the cave entrance. The last maybe 100 meters were a bit of a scramble over the coastal rocks until we reached the small entrance - where I had been before.

We brought a few slings and even cams to build and anchor in the small first chamber before the rappel but it turned out that there is a bomber 20cm diameter column right next to the hole down to the main cavern so that we only needed two slings to build our rappel station of that column (and another a bit further back for backup).

I went rapped down first squeezing myself through the hole and then freely hanging on the rope while marveling about the weird and stunning scene that is hidden underground. Wolf followed and we started exploring the main hall and the neighboring smaller chambers and pathways. Overall we took about an hour to check out all the nooks and crannies (and the interesting rock formations in them). Rest assured there were many „uh´s“, „ah´s“ and „He, look at this!´s“.

After studying the cave topo (by Mallorcaverde) again to make sure we had not missed anything we started to make our way back up on the rope we had left fixed at the entrance. I jugged up using the „footsling in a micro-traxion and GriGri on the climbing harness“-method and Wolf followed with a variation thereof.

Unfortunately during our stay in the cave a rain shower had gone over the area and soaked the stuff we left outside (we could have put it in the entrance chamber - we dummies). Oh Well! We just packed up our remaining things and hiked back to Canyamel in the rain - still happy about our little adventure.

Adventurers: Wolf and Bengt