A few days ago I went to see for myself the first 9a in Asturias. It’s in Teverga, the ever expanding climbing paradise, but on an out of the way buttress which sports a selection of super routes.
Established over 15 days by Madrid climber, Pablo it’s a 28 metre gently overhanging wall which very unusually goes without resort to chipping or sica!! A fantastic effort!!
Arriving at the crag it was pretty obvious this wasn’t an evening for sending: the ‘Indian summer’ was continuing and it was around 25 degrees and very still. Jairo and Ignacio Mulero (a very strong youth who was projecting the route) were already there and it was incredibly inspirational to see Isaac ‘warming up’ by smoothly climbing through long sections of the route despite the sweaty humid conditions.
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Ignacio Mulero on the 9a
Unfortunately for me the crag’s easiest route is a 7c+/8a, called Alien and so after warming up as much as I could with a theraband I gamely gave it a go!!
Way steeper than it looked, I got thoroughly spanked first go and lowered off from what I thought was the crux as a sweaty mess. Second go I felt better and arrived at the ‘crux’ and after a few dogs got through it…however, as ever a bit of misunderstanding doesn’t help and I realised with horror that what I had done was a preliminary bit and the crux was yet to come.
