Spain Climbing, Costa Blanca: Photo Essay

Spain...

9 pitches up on a sea cliff, 7.5 kilometers across a ridge, climbing out a sea cave, watching the colors shift as the daylight fades...

Olta and the Peñon

Ryan climbing out of Parley, one of the top 10 routes of all time with its freehanging rappel

Luke on a 7a at Castallet de Calp

Sierra de Toix...

Crossing the Bernia Ridge, 7.5 km. Ryan soloed it barefoot.

The Peñon de Ifach, Calp, 300 meters high

The Puig Campana, 15 pitches and more

Parley: Spanish Sea Cliff Photo Essay

Sometimes we need to parley - with ourselves, with gravity... To disappear to some wild coast.

Sea caves, sea cliffs, sunshine and the distant Spanish shores have called for a while now and I am answering it. Costa Blanca is home to thousands of climbs, many trad routes on the limestone that can be hundreds of meters high in spots.

Sunburn, nesting territorial gulls and the sparkling sea...

The routes often require total focus - placing tiny nuts, wobbly cams, clipping rusted and untrustworthy bolts and sunbleached and frayed threads on wild traveses with sea spray coating you with its saltiness. Steeply overhanging pockets and curious jams and locks to carry you above the sparkling void.

A good mindgame to keep one connected and never straying far from the eternal moment.

All images ©Bennett Barthelemy April, 2016

Every Day: A photo essay...

My new year seems to always begin as I feel spring coming back into my bones... The snows are melting, the wind has less bite, the days become brighter. A time for reflection, a time to appreciate what the chances taken, have returned. Here are a few images that for me really capture this journey through time. The reminder for me is to find and celebrate something every day.

Maybe it is the way natural light falls across a transient shape in a seemingly static landscape. Perhaps it is conveying the conviction and belief that indigenous activists bring with them to the world stage and the promise of a better life through awareness. It could be the dream of the next alpine ascent and the promised return to a mountain range I love. Or the synesthesia of the dream that will not die from a vicarious feeling that the right image evokes...

These are all things worth celebrating, worth finding again and realizing - every day.

The Call of Home

A return is always something curious.

When a piece of you never really leaves a place it seems more accurately a re-awakening. Once returned I cannot help but wake up before the sun - to watch it crest the ridge, watch its rays chase the shadow line down the canyon wall. And to watch the full moon fall through the purpling sky.

A return in spring is easy to romanticize. The brown hills are green again and transient color and fragrance bursts. New vivid sycamore leaves sprout, black and purple sage, ceanothus covers whole hillsides in faux frost...

images ©Bennett Barthelemy

Exposure Therapy in España

Back beneath grey skies again but my suntan and smile will take a while to fade.

Always good to get a little exposure therapy in winter - sun and verticality... 

Always amazing to get to witness your partner becoming more confident and passing milestones - First lead climbs, first rappels, first mulit-pitch sea cliff, first time on limestone, first retreat off of a loose trad route, first time rapping to the end of a rope several feet off the deck, first simul-climb, first solo knife-edge ridge traverse, first time climbing and shooting with a camera. Perhaps the most impressive is surviving living in a tent for a week and sharing a kitchen with a dozen dirtbag climbers for the first time. 

I am amazed and realize what a gumby I was my first couple decades of climbing when my partner realizes all this just a few months into her climbing career - and in just a week.

all images ©Bennett Barthelemy, unless otherwise indicated...

Crack Climbing Workshop in Copenhagen!!!

Hey all -

I will be teaching crack climbing workshop (intro to misery) in Copenhagen in March. If you will be local please come join. It will be here Blocs and Walls.

There where be a slideshow presentation of my images from lots of magical trad venues from around the globe - and free band-aids for all who finish the course.

Kullen Winter Trad

Getting my acculturation into Scandinavian climbing... Not complaining so far. A few visual impressions from the day out yesterday...

Photos and video ©Bennett Barthelemy