El Dorado

As we didn’t have time to climb El Dorado yesterday we had another chilled out start this morning with the aim of climbing El Dorado in the afternoon. To warm up we headed to the main cliffs of Sierra de Toix for a few sport routes in the morning.

El Dorado is an impressive line up a striking cliff face above the sea below Sierra de Toix. The first pitch is an exposed traverse onto a ledge below the main groove line, while the climbing was never hard it was pretty serious due to a lack of bolts or natural gear. The main pitches then follow a huge groove line up the cliff, from the bottom this looks incredibly intimidating as it is incredibly steep.

The climbing up the main pitch was absolutely fantastic, it is now also fully equipped with good bolts so it was just a case of enjoying the outstanding climbing. The route was impressively steep, but generally the holds were excellent so it was often possible to get the weight off your arms. This just lead to a brilliant atmospheric pitch, from the hanging belay towards the top of the groove the view down was fairly impressive and exposed.

The third pitch had a thin technical traverse to gain the final slab which had some enjoyable climbing up to the finishing ledge. Two easy abseils lead back down to the ground, the second one was fairly exposed as it went over a large overhang, which I was surprised to see a line of bolts through!