13 Dec Saïd Belhaj 9a in Catalunya

 
Swedish climber Saïd Belhaj has done Esclatamasters 9a in  Perles  (Catalunya), a 40 m pitch opened by  Ramon Julian Puigblanque  on 2006, and repeated by Dave Graham and Patxi Usobiaga.

Here his report on Petzl team website:
As I already started to feel tired from all the climbing this year I put in a last effort to try to do one more route. I had tried this route "Esclatamasters" in Perles (Catalunya, Spain) in october and felt I didn’t want to save it for next year, but give it one last try. It wasn’t too hard to leave a cold and snowy Sweden for some climbing in the south. But it turned out to be really warm (for being december in the pyrenees) and humid,  and the route quite wet in many places. I desperately went to Andorra and bought a blowtorch (which I’m an expert with after trying this wet route in Sweden this past summer) to try to do some miracles. And it worked well. Also, the last day the weather was perfect and the route was 99% dry. Just before the sun set entirely I set of on my last try. And you know how that last try always end up being -desperate. And somehow I managed to fight my way up this amazing line of 40 meters with all styles (exept maybe off width), doing all the trix I’ve ever learned."


 
Source: Petzl Team – Kairn