Spring travels

[otis.]

Hello fellow board members,

I am in the early stages of conducting research for a 2 week trip to Europe next spring.  Looking for suggestions on the best places to climb sport routes in the 5.11-5.14a range.  I know that is a fairly wide range, but my family has a fairly wide range of abilities.  Climbing will be the focus of the trip, but ideally we will be in places that also offer some fun things to do on off days and almost as important to the climbing, good food options.  Suggestions?

Thanks.

[jcm]

You may want to more narrowly define "spring". The list of areas that are in season in March are much different from the list of areas in season in May.

[MarkAnderson]

When you say 5.11, do you mean everyone is warming up on 5.11, or projecting 5.11 (and warming up on easier routes)? The reason I ask is that seems to be the cutoff for quite a few prime crags. Ceuse has basically nothing below 5.11 (and the good 5.11s are few and far between). Probably not a great spring crag anyway though. Rodellar is similar--a couple good 5.11s, but basically nothing worthwhile below that (also marginal in the spring?).

Margalef comes to mind, it has a ton of variety and a number of crags have 5.14s next door to 5.11s (and everything in between). There are also tons of routes below 5.11. Siurana has at least one wall with good 5.11 and below routes, but the climbs don't really get good until mid-5.12. At a place like the Frankenjura you could find good routes of any grade, but you would likely have to visit multiple crags to do so. Also could be wet in the spring. Buoux has good grade variety if you're in to that type of climbing, actually the easier routes are probably better than the hard routes.

All of these places have fun things to do. You can't swing a dead cat in Europe without hitting several castles, medieval cities, and bakeries that would blow the doors off any Dunkin Donuts. That said, the coolest non-climbing place I've been in Europe is Barcelona. The city is gorgeous, full of bucket-list quality attractions (Sagrada Familia, Park Guell, La Rambla,..) and the food is unbelievable. Most of the Catalunya crags are with 1-2 hours of Barca.

The least culturally interesting crags I've listed are Ceuse and Rodellar. Both are in a beautiful setting, but they're relatively isolated from major attractions. For family fun, the Frankenjura wins thanks to the "rodelbahn" (alpine slide), though if your kids are in to beaches, it might be nice to be in Spain.

That pretty much exhausts my personal experience with European sport crags

[Otis.]

Thanks for the feedback so far. To clarify, we will be going in May. Unfortunately, the available time window must place the trip between the second week of May and the second week of June. As for climbing abilities, the families RP abilities are between 12a and 14a. The focus of the climbing will primarily be on high quality 5.12c-13c routes, but they're needs to be enough at least semi-interesting 11's for my wife to climb. She can usually hangdog up through 12b, but I don't think it will be as pleasant of a trip if I can't find some good mid 11's for her to climb. As for warming up, we're used to warming up on hard 10's and/or low 11's, so a lack of "easy" routes won't be a problem.

As a family, we aren't really into the typical major tourist attractions. We prefer to hike, see cool natural things and explore. However, checking out a few castles, museums and such are cool too. For our last major trip, we went to S. Africa, tried to climb (dealt with a lot of rain ) went on a 3 day safari, dove with sharks, hiked and explored. Oh, although I refer to them as kids, they are in college, so they're a bit older. Other than that, as I previously mentioned, high quality food is high up on the list as well.

Thanks!

[MarkAnderson]

Rodellar is world famous for canyoneering, in case your "kids" are into that. It's also further north and higher in elevation so it could be do-able that time of year(?)

Ceuse would probably be pretty good in that time frame. Tons of great routes in the 12c-13c range. It's in the Haute Alps so I imagine there are some good hikes, etc in the area, but I don't know.

I wonder if the Dolomites would have a good mix of awesome hiking and climbing. I haven't been there.

[tiago]

Rodellar is totally doable in May. Actually, it may be the perfect time of year to climb, as the routes have dried and it's not that hot and full of people as in the Summer, when it gets unbearably overcrowded with climbers. The best routes in Rodellar are from high 5.12 up, but you have some nice easier routes, although unfortunately many of them are very polished.
Margalef is also a nice spring place. Although it's warmer than Rodellar (and, in Spain, it's already hot in May) you have sun and shade. Lots of routes for all grades, close to Barcelona and other nice crags.
It wouldn't be absurd to consider the idea of starting in Margalef, where everybody will have fun climbing, and then move to Rodellar for some hard overhanging climbing (if you are into that, Rodellar is THE place).

[Otis.]

Mark, Tiago, thanks for the feedback. I think Spain is the early leader. We would probably do some crag jumping between Margalef, Rodellar, maybe hop over to Mallorca for a few days. We'll be there for two weeks, mostly looking to onsight and collect quick redpoints, so jumping around a bit makes sense. I also like the idea of being close to Barcelona, as it does seem to be a cool city. With that said, I am still considering all options, so if anyone else has suggestions, please share.

[rob]

Mallorca is definitely worth a visit if you've never been. Not sure what it will be like in May though, but the island is packed to the brim with excellent sport crags (with a good mix of grades) as well as the DWS spots it's known for. I spent ten days there in the October of 2013 and enjoyed the sport more than the DWS. Also the island is beautiful, there's lots for families to do and the crags are all not too far apart.