El Realet Ridge
For a few years now we've been itching to traverse an amazing ridge-line that lies between the Puig Campana and El Divino. Although the ridge is dwarfed by these much large mountains, it has a striking nature to it, a castellated knife-edge ridge!
So that's the appeal for us.
A complete traverse of the El Realet Ridge is a multi-day expedition, so it was a 'best of' we were aiming for. El Realet summits one, two, and three with all that involves.
A leisurely start, only leaving Calpe at 9am we we're maybe being optimistically lazy with our timings, but the real threat of be-nightment added to the sense of adventure. The quick dash over to Finestrat and a car shuttle saw us actually set off on the path around 10.30am, no worries.
The initial section was very straightforward, even a little disappointing. It took us to El Realet one, our first summit. From here we began to gain a grasp of what lay ahead. Lots and lots of very exposed climbing over knife-edge ridge, plenty of loose blocks and vegetation that most certainly bites back! Brilliant.
Once on the castellated section of narrow ridge the climbing was straightforward, so it was possible to fully enjoy the amazing positions it was taking us to. This is almost certainly the narrowest ridge i've yet to traverse, they really are't joking when the words 'knife-edge' are used, it is. Had this continued for hours we would have been even happier, but all good things come to an end, and so the ridge widened, a little.
We arrived at El Realet two, complete with the ruins of what I can only imagine would have been a lookout post in times gone by. An abseil then lead to more narrow sections of ridge, more fun times, and another abseil. This marked the final fun section. Now it was all about descent, and with more abseil stations to find and time marching on all too quickly, our focus soon switched to moving rapidly & safely to ensure we made it back before night-fall.
Thankfully our descent was indeed rapid and without any problem, so we arrived back in plenty time, phew! El Realet Ridge - tick
Big thanks to Kate for climbing this with me. And to Kim & Jenny for coming along too.
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