Chulilla - My first experience Sport Climbing

Chulilla was undoubtedly the best holiday of my life. Granted, it was the first rock climbing holiday I've ever been on and in comparison my past holidays have consisted of cheap, party hotels in scruffy touristy destinations where culture consists of serving you sambuca shots in a sombrero, but still! It is beyond comparison to anything I have ever experienced before.

Chulilla is a small isolated town an hour car ride from Valencia airport

It's postcard perfect but be warned this place is untouched by tourism, and consequently finding an English speaker is next to impossible. We got by with a lot of miming, gesticulating and saying English words with a Spanish accent "Uno cheeekan *flaps arms in chicken type manner* sand-weech por favor?" - no-one seemed to mind our ignorance and we became affectionately known as the English people who speak with a strange accent and enjoy doing chicken impressions.

The Climbing

Chulilla was phenomenally popular in the 80's and 90's and believe me you can tell, a lot of the routes are marked up harder than the guidebook due to the amount of polish on the rock. The word with the local climbers is that this is what makes Chulilla great 'as it forces you to climb more technically' - as a newbie to Sport Climbing I have to say that at times it forced me to climb like a flailing octopus.

Our first stop was to drop by the local climbing hostel for some tips about the area, the recently renovated El Altico looked great and the owners were incredibly helpful and friendly - when we go back we'll be booking rooms here: http://www.elaltico.com/albergue/

They advised us on crags to climb if we wanted sun/shade at different points in the day and gave us a rough idea of where the easier climbs were. With this information in hand we went back to our apartment to consult the climbing guide that we had been provided. This 'guide' became the bane of our holiday, a photocopy of a photocopy had rendered the pictures so unrecognisable that we used markers such as "if you squint your eyes and tilt your head left, whilst hanging from this tree upside down that ridge line sort of resembles the horizon on this picture don't you think?" (We discovered on the last day that in a tucked away obscure shop you could buy a full colour copy for €15 - top tip!) It was this sort of logic that enabled my friend Alex to struggle up what he though was a 6a but turned out to be a 7b. Good times!

When we managed to decipher and identify crags the climbing was incredible, and the crags were very well cared for - all the routes had recently been rebolted and some had the name of the climb painted on at the bottom which was an invaluable aid. Granted the polish threw us off at times and caused more than one dangling tantrum of frustration but the beautiful climbs and views more than rewarded us for our efforts.

Most of the crags were within a 20 minute walk from out doorstep, however one day we decided to branch out and hike through jungle like territory to seek out some shaded climbing. After negotiating boulders, chain bridges and suffering more than our fair share of bug bites we stumbled into a paradise clearing featuring a shaded jutting rockface that made for a spectacular afternoon. 

 As a grand finale to our holiday we decided to tackle an 80m 6b 4 pitch via ferrata, it was the most enjoyable yet mentally challenging climb I'd ever done - the rungs were sometimes 2-3 metres apart and required some tactical mantles/desperate lunges of faith in order to progress. It topped out right next to the hostel where we stumbled chalky, dusty and bleeding into the bar for a well deserved beer.

I couldn't recommend Chulilla enough as a destination for beginners and advanced climbers, it was clear (well as clear as it could be) from the guidebook that we had barely scratched the surface of what this great location has to offer. There is a wealth of climbs from 4-8a to keep you busy for an eternity and a gem of a climbing community to inspire and learn from.

Check out the full album from Chulilla on my Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/EatClimbLove - all likes greatly appreciated!