EPIC ON THE PUIG CAMPANA
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At 1410m, Puig Campana is the second highest mountain in the region of Alicante. Its distinctive notched profile dominates the skyline behind Benidorm and towers above the little town of Finestrat. There are many good climbs, and one of the most obvious lines, the Espolon Sur Central (South Central Spur) gives over 400m of Grade 4 (VS 4b) climbing on superb rock.
There were four of us attempting the route that day: Paul Barker, John Hopkins, Julie Wassel and me. We set off before dawn and parked the car at the foot of a track leading up the hillside. We were pleased to find that we were the first ones to arrive, since we had overhead the Old Men of Oxford planning to come the same day. We started walking up the track at about 6:30 am. Paul and I had done the route last year, but in spite (or perhaps because) of this we managed to miss the turning and ended up floundering around in the thick and robust Mediterranean vegetation before we could get back on track.
We had lost time, and skin, and as it was now daylight we were dismayed to see a pair of climbers ahead of us. However, they walked past our route, and we soon staked our claim at the foot of the climb, just as the Old Men of Oxford appeared in sight. We geared up and started climbing at about 8:00 am.
The Direct Start to the route starts below a large oval formation, El Escudo (The Shield), and makes its way up for several long pitches until it joins the spur proper. The quality of the climbing improves as you get higher, and the spur becomes more defined. The rock is excellent, reliable and very rough, and heavily fluted with solution channels. There is the occasional manky peg, and some of the generous stances are bolted, but mainly you rely on traditional gear.
As we climbed higher the cloud began to drift in. Eventually it formed a complete layer below us, washing against the lower cliffs like the sea, while the higher peaks poked their heads through. It made a wonderful sight.
On a route of this size you soon lose track of where you are. Late on in the afternoon, Paul announced that we were on Pitch 7, based on the double bolt belay which fitted the route description. This was bad news, since it meant we were only a little over half way up the 13 pitch climb! By the time a closer reading of the guide had placed us on the penultimate pitch, Paul had already led off, and he was taken by surprise to find the large splodge of red paint that marks the top of the route and the start of the descent.
The "easy way off" involves a hairy traverse across the face of the mountain. The harder moves are protected by fixed wire cables into which we clipped our harnesses, but there were a number of quite difficult moves to reach these, all the time on very steep ground above a 1200’ drop. After a while the difficulties eased, but the route is far from easy and finding the widely spaced paint markers is a problem. It would be impossible to get down in the dark.
Eventually we descended a steep scramble which brought us into a wide scree gully. It was now quite late, and as we picked our way down the light was going. It seemed unlikely that we’d make the 7pm restaurant reservation which Paul had optimistically booked for us. By the time we reached the bottom of the scree it was dark, and we had also reached the layer of cloud.
To get back to the car, we needed to cross a plateau under the cliffs. We followed what looked like a path, but this soon fizzled out and we found ourselves in a maze of overgrown terraces. In the dark and the mist it was clear it would take hours to find our way down, and we quickly decided to retrace our steps and pick up the walkers’ path down to Finestrat.
The walkers’ path turned out to be less obvious than we’d expected, but luckily I came across a waymark painted on a boulder and we followed the path down. Even so, it wasn’t too easy to follow, but by picking up on the occasional sweet wrapper or fag-end I convinced myself, and successfully persuaded the others, that we were on course as we made our slow and laborious way down the mountain. Matters weren’t helped by John’s head-torch being on the blink.
At last we arrived on an unmade road which in turn brought us onto the main road near the Font del Moli. We followed this down to Finestrat and arrived at our usual bar, the Moli 2, at about 9:30 pm still wearing our harnesses. The first beer never touched the sides!
We soon relaxed over a couple of drinks, while Paul fended off the attentions of an unusually friendly Swiss gentleman, and ordered a taxi "up the roadio", as Paul put it, to retrieve the car. We had been 15 hours on the hill, and had I not spotted the waymark and found the descent path we could have been up there all night. It doesn’t qualify as a proper Epic, I explained to Julie, since we got down before closing time – but it came pretty damn close.