Ca's Catala climbs

Crag: Ca's Catala, Mallorca
Routes: Rama Lama Dindon (f5:led), Bon Profit (f4c:sec), Covas Bros (f5:led), Ebam 2 (f4c:led), Ebam 1 (f4c:sec), El Rey de Bastos (f5c:led), La Virgin del Felpudo (f6a:sec), Makarenko (f5b:led), Aitornillo (f4a:sec)
This was a fairly obvious choice for the airport day, located on the western side of Palma Bay. The unfortunate thing is that it was supposed to come after a shakedown on Friday, then the big mountain day we had planned for Saturday. That didn't happen because of the lost day and tight schedule, but at least we had the two slices of the sandwich, even if we missed out on the filling! This crag has a rather suburban feel, a short walk-in from the resort of Sant Augusti, with some enormous mansions across the small valley. The immediate environment is pleasant with views of the Med from the top of the crag: in fact, the clarity of light was such that we could clearly see Ibiza and Formentera although they are well over 50km away. We did the crag's duo of three-star routes first, longer (20m+) pitches on a slabby rib of rock. Nice climbing, although the f4a struck me as severely undergraded: it was fairly sustained with tricky and quite technical moves to overcome a bulge below the top. The limestone at this crack was rough and unpolished, like shards of glass in places, reminding me of Chateaudouble. Given our total lack of recent climbing, we kept the grades modest again and just went for mileage. Much further left, I led the shorter line of Covas Bros at f5, which took a blunt rib. It went quite easily until a steepish finish on flatter holds. The two lines to its left were strong natural lines - my lead went easily to a deep crack splitting a detached pillar while Vic's was a longer route (20m) taking the obvious groove at the left-end of the crag. Both were enjoyable. We had some lunch, as the cloud had all burnt away to give another incredible day of deep blue skies. The temperature had climbed dramatically and we found ourselves sweating in shirt-sleeves on sun-kissed rock. I upped the grade a tad with a lead of the short but good El Rey de Bastos at 5c. This had reachy moves on pockets to gain a long horizontal undercut. From here, strenuous moves on good, positive holds led up a crack to a steep finish. The 6a to the right was just as good: another athletic and strenuous pitch, getting the blood pumping and forearms working. We both did them cleanly and quickly, before finishing with two short routes and heading to the airport via a quick lunch and a couple of final Mallorcan specialities.