Jungle Speed

During our Christmas trip in Siurana Toni Arbones showed me a nice project. On the right side of the "la capella" sector is a nice overhanging, limestone wave.


((c)by Markus Jung)
Working on it with Martin

The line didnt looks so hard, from the ground, I thought maybe 8b+.. but it took me a loong time to connect the single moves. It definetly had the hardest moves I did in a route. I worked on it nearly two weeks. Back home in January I set the crux move on my woody. I trained a lot to become strong for the very specific shoulder move.
After one month plastic climbing and training I went back to Siurana. Happily the crux worked much better :)
The line is short, not more than 12m. The hardest is to link two hard boulders in a raw or like two cruxs of a 8c+ route.. The most powerful move is a crazy shoulder move, the second a litle jump in a two finger pocket. The first hard move worked well, but catching the pooket took me a lot of time... There are only very small footsteps and its very hard to coordinate the jump..

I only had three weeks, sounds like a long time... but you have to find good condition, not to cold, not to warm and good skin. Some cuts on my fingertip made it very exciting, everything took some time. But finally I managed to catch the pocket and it was very scary to climb to the top. I really didnt want to fall up there! The moves are not that hard but on the upper slap it was very exciting to stay only in a bad slopy hole and make a long move up....
At the top there was still some snow in the last jug, but fortunetly the mantle is not that hard if you know how to do it. The last carabiner was icicled and I had to break it before I could clip the rope :)
I was very happy to were able to send this nice line before I had to leave!!!

During sending I precliped the second bold. I think if it is possible to clip the first bolts without help(sticks, stones...)from the ground its ok. But after sending I saw that it is also possible to clip it during climbing, what is for sure the more beautiful way, just didnt recogniced it before. I think it is good to know how it was done when a line was climbed for the first time.

((c)by Markus Jung)
I named it "Jungle Speed" because the ambiance is very green with some ivy growing up the trees and on the rock. And you need the same concentration and controlled reaction like in the game we played so much in the evening :)

Thanks to all patient belayers: Markus, Martin, Jasmin, Adelaide, Toni, Pinky, Bogna and the ones I forgot :)

There will be some more pictures soon.