re- Sant Benet

Sant Benet remains this special, mystic place.  It is not that evident to feel the mystic nature of the place in just one visit though.  One remains with some strange taste in the mouth - wondering what the whole fuss is about.  Conglomerate routes, move after move, bolts - nothing special, the usual routine of going up, down, belaying, getting the draws, pushing a little bit harder.  And then one day you go down and you realize it was all as if in a dream, in a separate reality, in the mist that so often covers the monastery and its bells - but not the Agujas on top, not the St Benet top of this Mother Mountain, the Mont Serrat.

Does Mont Serrat mean closed mountain?  I don't know, but St Benet feels closed, separate, illusive.  It is on the opposite spectrum from the noisy Margalef, the crowds, the vans, the stars and the paparazzi following the grown-ups or the children sending those projects, ticking down the lines, climbing numbers, not walls, doing sends, not routes.  St Benet does not let you touch it that easily, it does not open itself to your inflated ego - you can be a weekend warrior climbing 5s or an experienced project-sender working 8bs, you can still be insured to fail at some 'warm-up' 6as at the Totxos sector.  If not the one to the left, it will be the one to the right that will get to you.  But St Benet is not only about humbling down the ego, or about good bouldering.  It is all that and much more.

You have to pass one of those days there, climbing up the stairs, out of the mist, into the sun.  Seeing the crazy goats soloing some of your projects, deciphering the codes left in many ermitas, hidden amongst the needles labyrinth, or just contemplating frogs and wondering about time.  It is all St Benet, it is all there.  Come, grab a project, do it, and go down.  But a part of you will stay - sooner or later you come to realize that a part of you has remained in those strange shadows, in the curving line of the horizon, embracing that last foothold you dismissed so quickly.  The dreamcatcher, the convoluted dreamcatcher set in stone.  That is St Benet.

Iripi piripa showing its powers to the loyal follower in the middle of the sky...

And myself fighting for Crit de Crim on another strange, cold, and auspiciously dark winter day in the middle of spring...

Despite my resounding and ambitious plans to "try the last three routes on the right this winter" i have only managed to climb Crit de Crim this spring - but as my friend says, climbing in St Benet is not like climbing in any other place.  You do not send another 7a and forget about it.  No, you climb Crit de Crim, a route formed by thousands of years of sea washing the rock, bringing it down, stone by stone, from the mountains of Mallorca, of Pireneu, or maybe even from the far-away Alps.  It has been there, it will remain there - and we are passing through, engaging in the physical contact with this incredible, time-worn temple.  Will the contact help us understand, help us finally be at peace?  Or will it remain the dream?