Chris Sharma Spain Update

Chris Sharma Spain Update

Since his first ascent of Golpe De Estado back in December, Chris Sharma has been keeping things low key.  He is still holding it down in Spain, but poor weather has severely hampered his and Dani Andrada’s ability to open new lines.  This is not to say that the entire winter has been a bust thus far.  From the Spanish language blog of Dani Andrada my High School Spanish skills helped me to glean a few tidbits of what has been going down in areas like Margalef.

Recently, Sharma did the first ascent of two routes in Oliana that I would say classify as moderates for him in Eye Fish (8b+ or 5.14a) and Gorilas en la niebla (Gorillas In The Mist – 8b/+ or hard 5.13d).  He and Andrada have also been bolting harder lines in Margalef in anticipation of better conditions.  Sharma apparently has his eyes on a potential 9b project called First Round First Minute and Andrada is eyeing up a possible 8c+ line that goes right called Buma ye. Other hard projects include BlankitoTierra de nadie (the crazy long roof pictured in Andrada’s blog?) and La ley innata (The Innate Law?).

From the looks of it, there is still more roadside virgin rock in Spain for hard climbing than they know what to do with which must be pretty frustrating for people trying to find hard routes here in the U.S!

In other news from Spain, youngster David Firnenburg recently climbing his first 5.14b L’espiedimonis at the tender young age of 13!

Any of this news is subject to correction of my translation skills…

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9 Responses to Chris Sharma Spain Update

  1. Joe Kinder February 5, 2009 at 10:01 pm #

    Nice Post Narc…the search keeps on….Only a matter of time.

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  2. Sean February 6, 2009 at 1:01 am #

    Sounds about right! I’ve spent some time living and climbing in Spain so I’ll give translating his latest post a shot..


    These days with the crags still a little bit wet, we’ve been motivated to bolt more routes and climb a little when the chance arises, and truthfully some really good routes have come from it. The latest routes opened in Oliana by Chris are “Eye Fish” 8b+?, and to the right, “Gorillas in the fog” 8b/+. Victor and Citro finished “China crisis” 8b+? and to the right of it, one that says 8a+?. I opened a new project to the left of “Pape mollat” called “Blankita” (blanquita — little white “thing”). It seems really hard, I don’t know (the grade)…

    In Margalef, we started two new lines in the Laboratori. I opened one to the left of Chris’s project, called “The innate law” and it seems to be at least 8c or harder, we’ll see. Chris opened one (or more) to the right and it seems really hard. Soon we’ll try and finish them.

    After giving up hope on a rainy day we found a really small cave that was about 12 meters high, interesting, with good possibilities and we opened one route that had two amazing starts, spectacular and dry. We tried them and the two starts will surely be 9a?. One we called “Nobodies land” and it covers about 20 meters of roof climbing, with an incredible rock formation and Chris opened a direct start that was very bouldery and very hard. To the left I opened a route “Saw 1” that feels around 8c or so and has 12 meters (of roof climbing). We also opened a bouldering traverse that is around 40 meters and crosses the entire cave.. It’s very good and has around four parts.

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    • Narc February 6, 2009 at 6:32 am #

      Excellent, looks like I was pretty close.

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      • Sean February 6, 2009 at 11:20 am #

        Yeah, don’t feel bad if some of his stuff seems confusing. I regularly read his blog and if there were a competition for run-on sentences, I think he would win… It makes it harder to read for those that don’t feel comfortable with their Spanish. That being said, I love reading his thoughts and seeing pictures of what’s going on in Cataluña. It’s really sad that he had to disable comments a while back because some people were leaving some pretty nasty comments.

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        • Narc February 6, 2009 at 11:23 am #

          Interesting, I hadn’t noticed that about the comments. Too bad really.

          I noticed that his grammatical structures seem to throw google translate for quite the loop, rendering those translations pretty useless.

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          • Sean February 6, 2009 at 11:33 am #

            Yeah, his syntax is really creative. It seems like it’s mostly stream of consciousness.

            I think a lot of the nasty comments dealt with the point when they burned his crash pads…

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          • Sean February 6, 2009 at 11:39 am #

            Yeah, his syntax is really creative. It seems like it’s mostly stream of consciousness.

            I think a lot of the nasty comments had to do with when the park rangers took his crash pads because they were “unsightly” and he was upset. Some people left some comments that were rather nasty letting him know how they felt about him.

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  3. The Adventure Channel February 7, 2009 at 7:57 am #

    Nice, but Spanish wasn’t my best class

    http://theadventurechannel.blogspot.com

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  1. Climbing Video: Chris Sharma On First Round First Minute, Neanderthal - February 1, 2010

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