the nostalgia project: Fiesta de los Biceps, Spain (2008)

The route

Fiesta de los Biceps is one of the most famous multi-pitch routes in Europe. I don't think it has acquired that status for any individual moves or pitches, more for its overall extraordinary character. To visualise the route, think of one of those big concave overhanging lead walls, fashionable at new climbing gyms in the early 2000s, then imagine that wall was fed steroids and grew to 300 metres high. Alternatively, just watch this excellent video of the route made by Mammut in 2016 for their "The Classics" series:



Fiesta summits the Visera, one of several conglomerate towers that make up the Mallos de Riglos. The hardest climbing on Fiesta is around sport 7a (YDS 5.11d).

Los Mallos de Riglos and Riglos village © Turismo Huesca
From left to right: Mallo Fire, Mallo Bison, Mallo Visera 

The context

Sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s, climbing magazines ran barely-believable photos of a crazy Spaniard soloing on an even crazier conglomerate face. This was Carlos Garcia, alone on Fiesta de los Biceps just a few months after it was first free-climbed. It is perhaps no exaggeration to say that these were the most radical images of rock climbing in print for many years; at least until footage of Alex Honnold on Freerider began circulating after his solo in 2017.

Carlos Garcia soloing Fiesta in 1989 © Desnivel

Garcia cutloose-showboating during his Fiesta solo © Desnivel

However over the next decade or so, normal people started climbing Fiesta (roped, obviously) and the route transitioned from the backdrop to Garcia's feat into a must-do classic. It definitely sat on my wish-list for a long time. I believe the catalyst for at last planning a Fiesta pilgrimage was a conversation with Dan during our 2007 Oman trip, but that may be wrong. Whichever, in June 2008 I flew to London from Abu Dhabi, took a bus to Bristol to meet Dan, flew with him to Pau in southern France from Bristol Airport, drove a rental car across the Pyrenees into Spain with a bivi somewhere near the border, continued blearily along dusty Spanish roads then watched the Riglos towers heave into view.

First night bivi, Pyrenees 

First view of Los Mallos de Riglos from the road

We got straight onto the Puro, a strikingly-thin satellite tower of the huge Bison feature, after arriving. I had had some concerns about the climbing for a few reasons. One was that my only prior experience of conglomerate, at Montserrat in 1991, had not gone well. However the larger cobbles on the Riglos stone seemed more amenable. I had also been rehabbing tendonitis in both forearms over the previous few months and so was not at all fit. And then there was the minor issue of jetlag. But the six pitches of the 6b Puro Normale route went smoothly enough.

Mallo Bison and the Puro

Dan on the Puro

Mallo Visera from the village
Fiesta de los Biceps takes the steepest line

The ascent

Optimistic after the Puro climb, we tackled Fiesta on our second day. This seems to be a recurring theme on my overseas trips; that the attempt on the main objective is made at an early stage after a deceptively easy introductory climb. Retrospectively, it usually feels like an error!

The technical crux on Fiesta actually comes low on the route, on the third pitch (7a) where the face begins to steepens. Prior to this, the climbing is slabby to vertical on big holds. Disappointingly, I fell off seconding the crux, which I remember as tenuous stemming on unhelpful small pebbles. This eroded my confidence and detracted from the rest of the route. However I did manage to swap leads through the next few pitches and led the steep sixth pitch (6c) clean, which was some compensation.

The situation of the route from pitch four onwards is extraordinary. The angle is continuously overhanging, such that you know rationally that you are a long way out horizontally from the base of the route hundreds of metres below, but the visual experience of this is very hard for the brain to compute. The strongest input is the chalk trail snaking below, which gives little clue to angle. For me at least, it sometimes felt weirdly like the face below was a low-angle slab.

Somewhere in the middle of Fiesta - pitch 4 or 5, I think 

Dan following pitch 6

Looking down from pitch 7 stance

Dan led the upper crux of the route (given 6c+ or 7a in different topos), which is less technical than the third pitch but steeper than anything else on the route. My fitness was really inadequate for this pitch and I pumped out on the slopey blobs several times, grabbing quickdraws to avoid swinging out over the void. I recall that I was so drained that I handed over the final lead too, which was only 6a.

Following crux pitch 8

Higher on pitch 8

The next day we drove poorly-signed roads for several hours to the famous sport area, Rodellar. Dan managed to continue climbing there but I rested. My best memory of that day was our bivi spot that night, at a gravel pull-out on a ridge with long views around the Pre-Pyrenee hills. The next day we both climbed at Rodellar then drove back to Riglos in the evening.

Rest day dinner, somewhere between Riglos and Rodellar

The remainder of the trip continued to be eventful. Dan was very keen to climb the historic and somewhat notorious Rabadá-Navarro route on the Mallo Fire tower. For some reason at that time (and maybe still?) Spanish climbers were preserving it as a museum piece, protected by junky gear left from early ascents. Route finding was tough. Dan got lost on one pitch and had to rappel back to a stance. I felt unnerved throughout and as far as I recall did not lead any pitches. The next day, we climbed the easiest route on the other big tower, Mallo Bison; a contrastingly-fun experience. The summit of this tower is a lovely spot, perfect for chilling out and attempting to photograph vultures. The diary tells me that we drove all the way back to Pau airport that evening, to catch a midnight flight back to Britain.

Vulture sculpture in Rodellar

Real vulture from Mallo de Bison summit

Mallo de Fire from the Bison summit

Subsequent ascents

None. I have not been back to the Riglos (or anywhere in Spain). Fiesta de los Biceps is prominent in my much-too-long "should repeat in better style" list. Given the limited number of years remaining in which climbing at this level may be possible for me, and the large number of new places that I would still like to visit, I doubt it will happen, but if I do find myself somewhere nearby, I hope I will make the effort.

the nostalgia project: French Pillar of Jebel Misht, Oman (2007)

The route

Jebel Misht from the east - spot the line

And from the south - ditto

From an online topo linked from Mountain Project:

"The 900m South-East face of Jebel Misht is thought to be the tallest cliff in the Arabian Peninsula. The 1979 French route follows the compelling central arete of the face and is undoubtedly the classic long climb of the region. Whilst there are many other striking cliffs in Oman, nothing else discovered so far dominates the landscape as the French Pillar. Anyone who has passed under the cliff will confirm that it is a stunning line, a desert hybrid of the Walker Spur of the Grandes Jorasses and The Nose of El Capitan; both climbs of similar scale."

The first ascent of the French route by a large team of (obviously) French climbing guides took a month and employed fixed ropes. Apocryphally the Sultan of Oman dispatched a helicopter to whisk the successful team from the summit to celebrations at his palace in Muscat!

The hardest climbing on the correct line of the route is around 6b+ or low 5.11 or, for Brits, E3'ish. However it is easy to get off-route and stray on to harder terrain.

The context

I first saw Jebel Misht in November 2005. I had driven with Shoko and Leo into Oman for several hours on the desert road between the Hajar and the Empty Quarter. Just past the first town of any size, Ibri, I noticed a vast dark wedge rising out of the haze to our north. It was Misht with the south-east face in profile, still 50 km away. The mountain disappeared as we drove toward it through a maze of ophiolite foothills, then as we rounded a bend it reared up abruptly in front of us. The line of the French Pillar was obvious and magnificent. Though my main focus at that time was on sport climbing, it was clear that I needed to make an exception for this thing.

With Leo, campfire on the Jebel Shams plateau

Jebel Misht from Jebel Shams

Tree on the Jebel Shams plateau

Unfortunately the only source of information available for the route at that time was a 1993 guidebook with a wordy account of climbing the route over several days but no topo.

In January 2006 I tried the route with a friend, Mike O, from Dubai. Many factors combined to make it an unrealistic attempt including a late start the day before which resulted in insufficient research of the approach hike and a lot of wasted time before we even began roped climbing. Then we got badly off-route on the first crux section. I led a long barely-protected pitch on virgin rock that still makes me shudder when I recall it; one of those "could have died" moments. On the positive side, when we abandoned our attempt and rappelled off, we saw where we had gone wrong. I also realised that the weight of carrying water, combined with terrain unsuitable for hauling, meant that a committed fast ascent was really the only sensible approach. And for that I needed a very strong partner.

Mike on the first pitch of the French Route

I mentioned the project to Dan who had already shown some interest in a visit to the region. He flew in from the UK in January 2007 for a two week trip, of which we allocated a whole week to time in the Misht region. My friend Wolf also offered to support us on a French Pillar attempt, generously promising to meet us on the summit by hiking the lower-angled north face.

Dan with local Omani kids who visited us for breakfast

Al Hamra towers from the same spot

Ahead of trying Misht, Dan and I did a “training route” on one of the more modest sized Al Hamra Towers, the seven pitch “En Attendant Les Lents”. This seemed like enough climbing for one day for me, but Dan had other ideas, and soloed the similar-sized but harder “La Mama” on the adjacent tower. Not for the first time I was reminded that he and I had very different risk tolerances. (Two months later I went back with a Dubai friend, Scott, to climb La Mama. I was horrified to find that the crux was insecure climbing near the very top of the 300m tower.)

Dan finishing En Attendant Les Lents

Dan soloing on La Mama

And higher on the same route

The next day was supposed to be a rest day but Dan proposed that we descend and ascend a via ferrata that had just been installed on cliffs below the peak, Jebel Shams - Oman’s highest point - where we were camping. This proved to be quite educational as the via ferrata followed traditional cliff “paths” used by inhabitants of a long-abandoned village at its base, including long vertical sections between ledges that had once been negotiated using dead tree branches and other precarious junk. The actual via ferrata was modern but Dan insisted that we should "solo" it without harnesses, lanyards or any of the usual equipment, added back some historical authenticity. After this adrenaline dose we drove over to the base of Misht. We had enough daylight to scope the approach hike properly - a distinct improvement on the previous year.

Side view of the cliffs crossed by the Jebel Shams VF - note vehicle for scale!

Via ferrata "soloing" shenanigans

Natural infinity pool above the Jebel Shams via ferrata

The ascent

Misht from our campsite

From the diary:

“3:45am start, then left car at 4:30am. Below the cliff just before dawn and finally started climbing at 6:30am. I insisted on leading the second pitch (again) to Dan's horror. ”

Waiting for dawn below the route

Beginning the simul-climbing

It was important for me to lead the crux (second) pitch as I did not want to feel that I was being “guided”. Dan was sceptical but I got the job done. In fact it turned out that I had completed the hardest moves on the pitch the previous year, before we had traversed off-route, and that the climbing above was just some strenuous yarding on big flakes. Above there we simul-climbed for hundreds of meters on easy ground. About half way up we encountered a food cache from the 1978 ascent with some meat cans still intact. Above this the line follows a classic ridge feature with an approximately 600m vertical drop to one side. Probably the most exposed situation I have ever encountered.

Thirty year old food cache. 

Massive exposure in the middle of the route

Near the top. We transitioned from simul'ing back to conventional climbing for the last 200m.

“Rest of the route passed very smoothly, bar a short shouting match on the ledges below the headwall where Dan left me unbelayed whilst messing around with a long traverse."

Simul-climbing becomes especially sketchy if you move sideways for long distances without placing protection! Dan had done this and then started ascending a harder vertical section. My analysis was that if he fell he would pull us both off - hence the shouting.

For the last 200m of the route we reverted to conventional pitched climbing. One pitch was quite fierce: a steep little finger crack which Dan led. It is possible that we missed an easier alternative.

Topped out the route at 3:00pm. At the summit we met Wolf, Suzanne and Tom and descended with them. Persuaded Tom to drive me back around to retrieve the car – managing to get lost in the main wadi in the dark. Then back to campsite on north side where we were treated to steaks and red wine – excellent.”

Dan, Tom and Wolf on the summit

The obligatory rack photo

The heinous north side of Misht. A knee-wrecking 1200m descent

Oddly we all managed to find the energy to climb the next day too. Bouldering (and swimming) in the idyllic Wadi Damm, one of the few places in Oman with year-round fresh water.

Active rest day messing around in Wadi Damm

Shallow water soloing

Subsequent ascents 

I visited the Jebel Misht area a few more times during my stay in Arabia but never climbed the route again.

Shortly after I climbed the route in 2007 I wrote the topo quoted at the beginning of this post and published it online. Surprisingly, twelve years later, I still see it referenced by people as the definitive description, even though a proper print guide exists. 

About three years after climbing the pillar, I had a business flight to Muscat from Abu Dhabi which flew directly over Jebel Misht in evening light. Viewed from above and in deep shadow, the South-East face was extraordinarily vertiginous, like a rendering error in a video game which had replaced landscape with blackness. It was hard to believe I had ever been there. 

the nostalgia project: Exile, Oman (2006)

The route

55 metres of razor crimps -
the monstrous Exile, 7b at Wonderwall in Oman

The limestone Al-Hajar mountains stretch for about seven hundred dusty kilometers from the northern tip of the Oman enclave, Musandam to the furthest western region of Oman. For much of its length it forms the approximate border with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) then a sort of retaining wall to the Empty Quarter sand desert. For climbers the Al-Hajar has strong positives and negatives. Vegetation is scarce and big cliffs are common, but the extreme heat renders most of the rock shattered and unreliable. Unfussy climbers will find almost unlimited "chossaneering" potential but good quality climbing needs more careful searching out.

Wonderwall, just west of the UAE/ Oman border and a few kilometres as the vulture flies from the UAE desert city, Al Ain, was one of the first cliffs in the region to be discovered by modern climbers and considered solid enough to document routes. It consists of a long fin of limestone strata twisted and up-ended to give interesting faces at various angles. A quintessential desert crag: camels roam amongst fig trees in the basin below the cliffs and some routes start straight from sand dunes. The Central Wall is Wonderwall's most impressive feature, being almost plumb-vertical and blank for a full rope length. Exile, 7b (5.12b) is the "king line" up its middle. Nowhere desperate, it gets its grade from its crimpy sustained character: one monstrous 55m pitch with no hands-off rests. Eighteen bolts!

The context 

When I was deciding whether to accept my job offer in Abu Dhabi in 2004, one criteria that had to be checked off was the existence of outdoor climbing. Fortunately this required no research as UK climbing magazines had already run a couple of articles about UAE climbing. Furthermore a frequent poster on the UKClimbing.com web forum, Alan Stark, had just returned home from the country, and often wrote about the climbing there. He had also written a guidebook, which he was selling as a PDF on a CD. I bought it before leaving Britain.

As Alan had discovered Wonderwall (and named it - in the mid-90s when scouse-rockers Manchester band Oasis were at their zenith), the cliff featured prominently in his guide. I could not help noticing that the Central Wall seemed unclimbed. Alan confirmed this in email, alluding to the probable need for bolts, which he regarded as undesirable. I was surprised that a traditional British view of climbing could hold sway so far away, but would soon learn that the small UAE climbing scene was heavily influenced by some older expats with roots in the 1960s/ 1970s. An exception had been the Cook brothers team from Dorset, Damian and Dominic, who had bolted a few sport routes in Musandam but they had left a few years before. (Indeed, Damian, very sadly, was dead, drowned in Mallorca after a DWS session.) Regardless, my interest was sufficiently aroused that I obtained some bolts and hangers before flying to Abu Dhabi.

Looking across Wonderwall from the west in typical hazy UAE conditions

Side view of Central Wall.
For scale, note the climbers on the hollowed-out ledge on the left.

Straight-on view of Central Wall

Somehow I managed to get a ride out to Wonderwall on my first weekend, with an enthusiastic expat teacher who, impressively, had also persuaded his employers, the American School, to allow him to build a lead wall in their gym. (Sadly Chris quit the UAE a few months later.) We did a few moderate sport routes then hiked under the Central Wall, which lived up to expectations.

However the most memorable part of the trip came near the end of the two hour drive home. Just after crossed the wide freeway bridge that connects Abu Dhabi island to the mainland, a Porsche Cayenne abruptly left the fast lane and cut diagonally in front of Chris' ageing 4x4, missing us by a few metres. We estimated the car's speed at well over 160 kmh. The driver, obvious from his clothing and vehicle to be a local, clearly valued making his exit ramp, rather than the next one a few hundred metres further up the road, as much more important than the high likelihood of killing two expats. The UAE's lethal characteristic of impatient fatalistic drivers with the wealth to afford the world's fastest cars would haunt my time in the country, especially as remaining an active climber necessitated long drives on the lawless freeways. The strangest thing was that the same dishdash-clad Abu Dhabi guys who drove with murderous intent were almost all unfailingly generous and charming in an office environment. At least to your face - it was hard to know what they gossiped about in Arabic behind your back.

On my second weekend I met the other climber in Abu Dhabi (at that time most of the UAE climbers lived in Dubai), an eccentric Brit/ Texan named Bernard. He and his wife had begun bolting routes at Wonderwall, figuring out techniques and equipment for themselves. He helped me find my way to the top of Central Wall from an area called Wonderslab and fix my longest rope down it. He also gave me directions to a hardware store, ran, like most small businesses in the UAE, by expat Indians, who happily overcharged me for a DeWalt cordless drill.

My next two visits to Wonderwall were solo in a rental Nissan Pathfinder. From the diary:

"Big day driving out to Wonderwall by myself. Drizzly weather.  Parked under the central walls and stashed water, spare drill and battery under my route, then hiked up to the ridge via the Wonderslab ramp.  Up on the knife-edge the air felt quite sultry and heavy, then started getting weird noises from my feet and little electric shocks.  Dropped down below the ridge (crossly) for a while, then after it started to rain, decided that the risk had diminished.  Then spent about 4-5 hours rapping and jugging my route, placing about 7 bolts.  Figured out most of the moves but some blank spots remain.  Rain picked up quite heavily before I left.  Got so wet I was almost hypothermic.  Drive back to AD was knackering, had to stop for an hour or so."

And the next weekend:

"Drove back out to Redat Saa (wonderwall) and completed my bolting.  Jugged my ropes left from the previous Friday, then abseiled, then juggged with the drill to half height, then went back down to fetch another bolt, then jugged whole wall again, then rapped from the top once again!  Left the crag in a thunderstorm and rain again, like the previous Friday.  Fairly gripped on the final abseil and had quite a struggle getting the ropes down.  On the drive home had to ford about ten floods on the road.  Fairly dramatic. "

I had no idea that rain could be a problem in that landscape but in fact the lack of vegetation and bare rocky terrain in the Hajar mountains means that precipitation has nowhere to go and that flash flooding can be immediate. At that time it seemed the worst outcome might be abandoning the vehicle but in subsequent years I would learn that deaths occurred regularly during rainfall, especially when floods were channeled into narrow wadis (canyons). Fortunately the terrain around Wonderwall was not of that type.

Eventually my engagement with the route transitioned from the preparation phase to actually attempting to send. The biggest obstacle then became getting to the cliff with a suitable belayer. Shoko (and five year old Leo) came out with me on a couple of occasions. I managed to send the route as far as intermediate anchors at 30m. The climbing was very continuous with a couple of crux areas. Maybe 7a (5.11d) to that point. At my highpoint there was a good foothold ledge which enabled an almost-rest with body pressed into the rock.

Shoko at Wonderwall, 2005

With Leo at Wonderwall, 2005

For a short while I fell in with a group of Dubai climbers who visited Wonderwall fairly regularly but were not at all serious about their climbing. On one occasion I lured them over to Central Wall from a slabbier sector of the cliff to belay me on the project. I rapidly abandoned that plan when I discovered that no-one had a belay device or any experience with the Grigri that I had with me. One guy offered, apparently in all seriousness, to belay with an Italian Hitch, a knot which works for belaying short easy pitches in, say, alpine terrain, but unthinkable for belaying an ultra-long sport pitch. I concluded that I desperately needed to find more climbers.

The main UAE climbing areas c.2005

A promising candidate was Pete, an ex-military English guy living in Dubai with an impressive climbing resume. Our first meeting was in Wadi Bih, a canyon area in the Musandam mountains about four hours drive north of Abu Dhabi. For reasons that I now forget we arranged to meet at a specific cliff deep in the canyon rather than somewhere nearer to civilization. I had not been to that area before. The last part of the drive involved many km on lonely gravel roads with multiple junctions and a weird unmanned border crossing (this was in 2005 - these days it is closed to expats). I eventually found what I believed to be the cliff, which was vast but also implausibly had a small sedan parked underneath it, apparently abandoned.

I got out of my vehicle and wandered around a little, then heard a yell from above. My prospective partner was high above on rappel, extracting some gear from the second or third pitch of a trad route he had FA'd on a previous weekend. He apologised and I suggested I would brew up some tea while waiting for him to descend. This met with significant approval. I would later learn that Pete had a near-limitless enthusiasm for the stuff. We would go on to climb a lot together, develop new cliffs and collaborate on the UAE's first printed climbing guidebook. Unfortunately, his Dubai base made it inconvenient for us to climb together often at Wonderwall.

Pete bolting a giant roof at Hatta Crag, Oman, 2006

Around the same time I also met Wolf, a German teacher, who had also just moved to Abu Dhabi with his family, in the much more convenient location of the Abu Dhabi american school's climbing gym. I was delighted to discover that he was a bona-fide climber with years of experience. Though he was more of a mountaineer than me, he seemed happy enough to visit Wonderwall and climb sport routes. In my memory we did that many times, but the diary tells me that I was actually so antsy to climb the project that I got Wolf to belay me on it on our very first climbing trip together.

Wolf, summit of Jebel Rum, Jordan, 2009

The ascent

Regrettably I remember very little of climbing the route. The actual crux is in the lower section, which I had already redpointed, a classic tenuous rock-up move on crisp little edges. The top section was more of a long fight against a building pump, clawing endless crimps and trying not to make any mistakes. Wolf and I were alone at the cliff, so the last moves high on the 55m wall felt especially remote and isolated.  The name, "Exile", had long been my working title for the project, and felt apt as I reached the anchors. 

Cheatsheet for Exile.
Numbers on the left are metres - not all the holds are documented!

Subsequent ascents

I never went back on Exile. Read, a very strong Dubai-based Canadian climber, repeated the route a year or two later ("too sharp!") but to my disappointment there was not much other interest. I was fortunate to be at the cliff with a camera and tripod when another Dubai climber, Gordon, made strong attempts in 2010, but as far as I know he never sent. The third confirmed ascent was by a young US crusher, Dylan, in 2011.  He onsighted it and pronounced it "great" and "the longest single pitch" he had ever climbed.

Meanwhile I bolted routes elsewhere on the cliff, but gradually became more excited about other areas. As my UAE years stretched out, I came to regard Wonderwall more as an old friend. Primarily a fun place to hang out, sit around campfires in the dunes and trade rumours of other secret cliffs.

Climbers camping at Wonderwall