March 8th - 14th 1997: The Mallorca Meet: Phil Ramsbottom
By Phil Ramsbottom
Members present: Dave Whittingham, Dave Shotton, Iain McCallum, Phil Ramsbottom Guests: Rowena Cahill, Sue Lee, Pam McCallum, Linda Ramsbottom
A week of perfect weather with one or two interesting adventures worth telling in rather more detail, however just to wet your appetites these include two separate benightments, one helicopter rescue and one national TV interview.
Mallorca - the First Adventure
The holiday started in a very quiet way, Linda and I were the last to arrive on the island, Iain and Pam had arrived on the Friday afternoon, Rowena, Sue and the two Daves late on Friday evening. As Rowena, Sue and the two Daves had spent the Friday night in a Renault Clio they were not even interested in taking a short stroll down the Bocher Valley on the Saturday. So the afternoon was spent enjoying the sun on the balcony, I was very impressed by Dave Shotton's choice of holiday reading - Novell Network Systems - all six hundred pages of it looked like an instant cure for insomnia to me. Elsewhere Pam and Iain (who were not staying in the same apartments as us) had gone out to recce a walk which they had failed on in the past.
On the Sunday the weather was still brilliant, so Rowena, Sue and the Daves set off to climb in the Bocher Valley where they sampled the boulders before setting off up the Sharks Fin, this proved to be an abortive attempt as someone has stolen all the bolt hangers (they were there last October), so after one and a bit pitches they decided enough was enough and abseiled off.
The rest of us went for a very pleasant walk on the Alcudia Peninsula, the plan was to follow the ridge from Pea Roja to Atalaya de Alcudia, this seems so obvious that I couldn't understand why it wasn't in the guide. We first climbed Pea Roja, something that we had all done several times before but with the views as wonderful as they are it was no problem at all to repeat it. After a bite to eat by the canon on top we descended by the normal path until past the crags, then cut back up left to rejoin the ridge, after about a quarter of a mile we were brought to a stop by a good half mile of pathless jungle stretching away into the distance. Not wishing to risk scratched legs so early in the holiday we retreated back to the normal path and continued following the route in the guidebook, consoling ourselves with the masses of wild flowers, especially bee orchids which seemed to be everywhere.
On the Monday I joined the climbers and Linda, Pam and Iain went for a walk in the Orient valley pausing for lunch in Orient before grinding up to the Castle de Alaro spurred on by thought of the bar at the top.
The rest of us wanted to climb Gubia Normal which is the classic mid grade climb of the island, "240 metres with an epic descent", unfortunately this last phrase did not register until late on in the afternoon. I teamed up with Sue and Rowena, this would allow the two Daves to go first without us holding them up. I decided to carry my rucksack and walk down from the top of the ridge, the others decided to abseil down.
The climb lived up to all my expectations, the only easy pitch was the first, this was followed by a line of eight bolts beckoning us over this steep bulge, luckily this was Sues' lead, she was soon up, then it was Rowenas' turn. Quite frankly I was shocked to hear such language from a lady but it seemed to work and it got to my turn, I found this pitch hard enough, it was 4C in the book but, not having climbed since the previous September I thought that I was just out of practice. The next two pitches were a little easier and brought us to the second 4C pitch, this time it was my lead. The problem was a steep wall about 10 metres high blocking the way between us and the crest of the ridge, we had to move left across the wall, then straight up to the crest, after clipping the first peg and looking at the next few feet I surprised myself by moving up without too much dithering to find a second rather flimsy looking peg just where I wanted it, a couple of supplementary rocks for good measure gave me the confidence to move up on to the crest where I found a brilliant thread for a belay. Rowena came up without any trouble, she had been worrying about this pitch after finding the second pitch so difficult which prompted me to read the guidebook again, all was soon revealed, on the second pitch we were attracted by the shiny bolts which were actually on an HVS 5A, our route should have climbed slightly to the right of them. Anyway back to the job in hand, we had another three relatively easy pitches to do so the climb was in the bag, but we were now starting to run out of time, the sun had started to drop quite low and had lost a lot of its' power. To save time either Sue or I would lead and the other would climb at the same time as Rowena. despite all these efforts by the time we had finished the last pitch the sun had set. We met up with the two Daves at the top, they had been there for a couple of hours but were still keen on an abseil descent. Rowena decided that she would walk off with me so we left the others preparing the abseil. When I turned round to look at the way off I was horrified, we were only half way up the ridge, the climbing was very much easier but there was still a lot of it left, the only thing we could do was to move as quickly as possible along the crest of the ridge which was about ten feet wide with very big drops on each side. It went completely dark about half way up this so we were moving by moonlight and feel.
Eventually we climbed over a wall which surrounds the trig point at the top of the ridge. It was now so dark that I did not risk changing my rock boots for the comfortable walking boots which I had in my rucksack, there was every chance that I would loose one of them, there was no chance of reading the guidebook so I had to remember the description of the descent. I could remember it saying that from the top a path lead to a track in five minutes. After about fifteen minutes of zigzagging round trees, shrubs, rocks and drops (some real and some imaginary) Rowena said to me 'tell me honestly Phil do you have any idea where you are going', I replied 'Put it this way, if we don't find that track in the next couple of minutes we are here for the night'. And then there was a faint grey area in front of us, then it got clearer and we knew we were safe. It still took us about an hour to walk down it as it zig zagged all over the place but we eventually got down to a farm where there was a mad donkey sized dog chained up at the side of the track, we know now that the chain does not reach across the road but at the time we couldn't be sure. We edged slowly past, with first the rucksack, then me between Rowena and the dog, not that the sack would have made much difference, from the sound of it could have swallowed that whole. In another 50 metres we were on the road from where it was about a mile to the car. But it still wasn't over, as we started to walk along the road chatting happily about how we both love dogs (but that one was the exception) when only about 10 metres further on, Rowena just wasn't there anymore, she had fallen into a drainage ditch completely invisible in the dark, she was very lucky as it was a good four feet deep so she could have been seriously hurt, as it was she just got a very bruised hip which she insisted on flashing at everybody she met for the rest of the week. We got back to the car at ten past nine only to see the car belonging to the abseilers was still there. I took one look at it and said 'well that's them out for the night', we got into our car and drove back to the flat arriving at just turned ten.
The next morning, when the abseilers hadn't turned up by 9:30, Linda and I decided that we had better go and look for them, we weren't worried as we were confident that they knew what they were doing, but we felt that we ought to go back (just in case you understand). Luckily we spotted their car on the road when we were about half way there so we could turn back with a clear conscience. When we all met up at 11:00 they told us the full story of the ropes jamming and getting caught on shrubs, Dave Whittingham merited hero of the night for his climb in the dark in an attempt to free the rope but when it got to 1:30 they decided to give up. They were all OK despite having spent a very cold and uncomfortable night.
To be Continued.........
