Where's Lee?

After an enjoyable honeymoon climbing trip to Kalymnos and El Chorro, I'm now in Whistler snowboarding. This will allow me to depump before I return to the heat of QLD.

The climbing was fantastic - I love limestone. I managed to onsight a couple of 26's (my PB onsight grade) as well as bank a nice 27 and 29 within a handful of tries.

In El Chorro I had a huge final day! The famous six pitch route we did was hard and sustained up a huge overhanging orange limestone wall with pitches of 24/25, 22, 24, 26, 24 and 21. And the crux 7b+ pitch was a...a... slab - argh! Luckily I wasn't leading that one! I led pitches one and five and only fell on pitch 1 (tough warm-up!). I climbed the rest of the route cleanly including the crux which was pretty awesome. The weather only just held back the whole way and through parts (like the crux), it was raining lightly or misting. The fifth 7a+ pitch I got was absolutely nails! Through a triple overhang and onto a Verdon-esque slab. I was on it for a looong time and was stoked to onsight it. Jonathan, an Israli-born Malaga local, was a great guy; very similar ability to me sport climbing (he's primarily an alpinist) and we laughed, joked, and sweated (yes, in 12° temperatures) our way up the climb. The route was so steep that to descend, the first rappeller had to re-clip the draws to make it back to the belays and the second guy would unclip them and get pulled in. It was by far the most full-on sport multipitch I've done. A great finale to the climbing for the trip.

I'll be back in Brisbane in about a week.