TL;DR A short ridge with technical, enjoyable and, at times, very exposed scrambling. It features a few bolted abseils (up to 30m) and several tricky down-climbs and traverses. The difficult sections are bolted, but it’s recommended to supplement this with own protection - 120cm slings are the most useful, a few cams and/or hexes would come handy too. A 60m rope is sufficient, but two 30m half ropes would be ideal. Overall, a great one day adventure conquering the three peaks of El Realet.

Overview

El Realet is the first section of the majestic Castellets Ridge, a very distinctive feature of Sella Valley. Looking from the coast, it’s located behind Puig Campana, with Finestrat being the closest town. Due to its remoteness, logistics of climbing El Realet are somewhat difficult; but that just adds to the adventure. After all, searching for seclusion is one of the main reasons we go out there, isn’t it?

Strava

Few things to note (they will make more sense after you read the post below):

• The finish point is where we dropped off our bikes - literally next to a road, but not visible to a passerby (which we don’t think there are any in that area)
• You can see very well towards the end of the ridge itself how we were going back and forth looking for the abseil point.
• There’s also a plenty of zigzagging and backtracking on the ’exit path’ from the ridge. Don’t follow us there!
• On the way back to bikes, we missed one obvious shortcut (shortly before joining CV-758), even though Google Maps told us to take it (it’s not quite visible on the Strava map)

Video

We actually made two videos:

• a short one for people who just wanna see what we’ve been up to:
  
• a longer one for climbers who wanna tackle El Realet Ridge themselves:

Equipment

• rope
  You need 60m of total rope length (as the longest abseil is 30m). We think two skinny 30m half ropes would be best - less weight to carry around (and can be evenly split between two people) and easier rope management, particularly for abseils. But if you’re like us and you only have one, thick, long (70m) climbing rope, it will do the job just fine.
• harness
• helmet
• belay device
  or whatever else you use for abseiling and belaying
• 6-8 long (120cm) slings
  these will be useful for extra protection in the crux section
• 6-8 quickdraws
• approach shoes
• climbing shoes
  we didn’t bring them and never felt they’d have been necessary
• few friends/maybe hexes
  we brought a set of nuts and they weren’t useful; friends would be better but you’ll be fine without

Logistics

Riding through Finestrat

Unless you live in Finestrat, you’ll probably need to get to the vicinity of the ridge first. And unless you’re a bit crazy (and live close enough) like us, you’ll go by car. Now, the guidebook recommends using two cars: leave one near the finish point (roadside parking, coordinates 38.59339, -0.23267), drive the other one towards start point, park it roadside, just after turning right from CV-758 into a small road, 38.57882, -0.24984 (you can see the spot well in Google Maps satellite view). As long as two cars is an option, you should probably do that - it will save you some walking. Approach should be quite straightforward from the spot where you leave the car - follow the road and turn right at some point - you’ll be seeing the ridge so you’ll know where to go. If in doubt, have a look at satellite view - it’s really helpful.

Ridge in the background

What we did was we rode our bikes from Benidorm and dropped them by the road, at (38.581152, -0.240838). That location was pretty random; we couldn’t go much further by bike (as the road ends), and we needed to return there anyway, so it didn’t matter where exactly we leave them. We had previously scouted that area using satellite view and it worked well for us in terms of minimizing walking and cycling distance. The benefit of going by bikes was more flexibility (as it’s easier to dump a bike by a road than park a car) and shorter approach; the downside was a long walk back.

Sunrise illuminating the sky

The offshoot path leading to the base of the ridge

The Scramble

Now for the fun part! As you get to the base of the ridge, you start an ascent; some rock outcrops appear here and there, but nothing technical yet. Scrambling starts after 15-20 minutes, marked by a mini wall with one tricky step. To make it more digestible, we have divided the route into multiple sections which we describe below.

Dramatic rock formation; Puig Campana in the background

Section 1: Getting to El Realet One

First tricky step; this is more or less where scrambling starts

The first section of the ridge is a Grade 2/3 scramble. Arguably, the most enjoyable part of the whole affair. It’s just at the level of difficulty/exposure where you don’t need a rope yet, but you’re constantly moving upwards on rock, trusting your feet, reaching for holds. The essence of scrambling. Route finding is easy; look out for red dots painted on rock if in doubt. It should take you 30-60 minutes to complete this section and summit El Realet One.

Section 2: Knife edge ridge (the crux) and El Realet Two

Knife edge ridge and El Realet Two behind

As you pass El Realet One, the next section comes into view. And what a view it is! Immediately in front, there’s the ‘knife edge ridge’ (nomenclature from the guidebook) - a scary looking, sharply pointed segment that makes up the crux of the whole route. Further ahead is an easier stretch that leads to the top of El Realet Two.

The downclimb

The crux is graded 4+ according to the guidebook; you might be thinking: ‘4+ is easy climbing with lots of jugs’. Well, yes, except in this case, it’s downclimbing and traversing. And even though the moves themselves are not hard, the fact that it’s something you don’t normally do makes it feel a little awkward and uncomfortable. Especially for the second, who faces big, swingy falls. Not that you will fall - just stay composed, take a deep breath, relax and all will be fine. Still, for peace of mind, the leader should place some extra protection - slings and cams will be most useful.

Traversing

Also, unless both leader and second are confident climbers (and the likelihood of falling negligible), we’d recommend setting up belay for the crux. Moving together may be a little too risky. If you bring enough quickdraws (8 will do) and slings, you should be able to cover the whole crux in one ‘pitch’, with a comfortable belay at the end.

You’ll know when the crux is over. That’s a good moment to have a drink and a snack. You won’t really be needing the rope until the next abseil, which comes soon after summiting El Realet Two (sooner than you think). But there are still few tricky steps ahead and one very exposed fragment, so it doesn’t hurt to stay roped out. Safety first!

Section 3: Castellated ridge and El Realet Three

A view shortly after first (30m) abseil - castellated ridge ahead

After reaching El Realet Two (a very featureless peak), a 30 m abseil awaits. At least the guidebook says it’s 30m. We had a 70m rope and there wasn’t much of it left at the end. But well, you gotta trust the guidebook, don’t you?

These bolts are on the side wall, not useful (unless for an abseil escape?)

From where you land after an abseil, a very short walk takes you to the start of the castellated ridge. It’s a bit like the knife edge ridge, but easier, smaller, shorter and not as striking. Still, there are a few tricky steps and a really exposed downclimb. The good news is that it’s bolted; the bad news is that there are only two bolts (or three?). The top bolt is in fact an anchor (old, rusty bolt connected to a newer bolt with a who-knows-how-old cord - but it seemed safe - see picture below), so you could abseil off it. What makes it awkward is that the downclimb is initially not very steep and the rock is shaped a bit like a dome, so if you were to lose your balance when abseiling, you’re facing a huge and painful swing. But to be honest, abseiling is probably the safest way of proceeding.

Exposed downclimb; butt has been utilised!

What we did was the usual ’leader, second with abseiling’ thing. The problem is that as the second removes protection, they face a nasty fall. On the flip side, they have the beta from the leader and the moves are not that difficult.

Do you trust your life on this?

At the end of castellated ridge, there’s a short abseil.

Abseil point at the end of castellated ridge

That’s pretty much it for the day, as far as climbing in concerned. You will now take a short walk to the top of El Realet Three and then make your way down.

Section 4: Exit - just don’t get lost

To go back to the ground, you have to trace your steps back for 70-100m to a white patch of gravel, and take an ’exit’ to your left. You then traverse the steep slope, make a couple of zig zag turns and get to an abseil point. Sounds easy, right?

Getting lost; we’re way too low here

Well, not quite. At least not for us. We got pretty lost looking for that abseil and wasted at least an hour roaming around that slope. At some point, we even took out the drone to aid us in the search. And it actually helped! We realised we went too low, got back up and found our holy grail in no time. Thanks DJI!

White patch of gravel (the lower one, no 1); from here, straight on, traversing the slope

Anyway, here is the deal. There are two patches of white gravel. One higher, one lower (number 2 and 1 on the graphic below). If you take the lower one (no 1), then there’s no need for zigzagging - you just need to go straight. We suppose a zigzag is needed if you enter the slope at no 2, but we haven’t checked. The graphic below should be pretty self-explanatory. The main thing we want to emphasize is that you don’t go too low - you should be going forward, not down.

The abseil point is located on the far end of the slope, next to few big trees; in fact, there’s a mini forest nearby. See picture below.

After the abseil continue left along the ridge for 5 minutes or so, until you reach a V-notch (a small gap in the ridge), at which point you can scramble down or make an abseil. We did the latter (even though it’s off a single bolt) as it was late and, truth be told, downclimb didn’t look straightforward.

From there, it’s a steep descent followed by a slippery not-really-a-path through dense vegetation. We struggled there as it got completely dark. It seems we went too much to the left and invaded someone’s terraces (they are visible on satellite view). Eventually, we found a road, did an unnecessary loop, went by a farmer’s house and through a gate, which, luckily, was open, and made it back to the road. After another hour of walking we were back with our bikes.

Conclusion

It was definitely an awesome day out and a big adventure. We’ll probably be going back to El Realet soon and hopefully bringing some more nice footage. And if we get bored of El Realet Ridge, there’s always the rest of Castellets Ridge.

Wendy medidating to calm her nerves