Gimme even more Sunshine

After exploring the some trad climbing on Tenerife a few weeks ago, it seemed logical to do the same for Gran Canaria, which we did the other week.

If anything, Gran Canaria offers more spectacular mountain views and offers more trad climbing than Tenerife, with ridge upon ridge sweeping down to the sea.

Much of the popular trad climbing is in the region of the Roque Rubra, a spectacular pair of pinnacles but with mostly top-end routes.

However, there are many more crags around Ayacata with routes at more amenable grades. Here is the top pitch off-width crack on ‘Morton’, a four pitcher at grade V.

With a couple of long rappels to get off, just look at that wonderful rough basalt rock – not much traffic (and therefore polish) around here.

This next climb gives another taste of the pioneering ambience of the place, a few crags further along, this time with an easy walk- off descent.

But Gran Canaria is still Spain, hence the ubiquitous dogs – wouldn’t like to be a black dog on a hot tin roof in those temperatures. The season was just ending, it was already getting too hot, hitting 33°C early afternoon.