What a great, great view!
Calpe is a coastal town located in the province of Alicante, Spain, by the Mediterranean Sea. The town is located 67 km from the city of Alicante, lying at the foot of the Natural Park of Peñón de Ifach, (Ifach Rock). It´s a 45 minute drive from Sella. Today, Terry scheduled a climb on the Sierra de Toix for us. This impressive ridge juts out into the sea overlooking Calpe to the north and Benidorm to the South. The 360° aspect means you´ll have a great view not matter what route you take! The sky was clear, no wind and the sun was doing her best to burn us. We were really excited to climb today.
Our hosts, Harco and Benny, provided us with a lunch and lots of water. After our walking-lesson yesterday Tamar and I should have known better, but again we were surprised about the amount of walking that came with climbing.
The way back we decided, we preferred climbing.
Leaving our car in a residential area of Calpe, we walked below the main buttress, up the loose gully on the far side of Toix Placa- Lower. The amount of loose rock on the ledges meant a helmet was a great idea. Not only when climbing, but also when scrambling under the main buttress and sitting at the bottom of the crag. We didn´t fly out to Spain, to get knocked out by some loose rock.
Scrambling up the gully, under the burning sun, we were both soon gasping for breath, wandering, why we´d have all this gear on our backs when walking as we were, couldn´t have been more dangerous. Loose rock everywhere, no grip to hold, no secure rope on our harnasses and the fall down would have been ugly!
