Anak Verhoeven, Stefano Carnati and Sébastien Bouin climbing strong in Spain

As mentioned last week, many of the world’s strongest sport climbers are heading to Spain to climb at its sunny crags, above all in Catalonia which with Margalef, Santa Linya, Oliana and Siurana hosts an almost unbeatable poker of high-end cliffs. While Belgium’s Anak Verhoeven made fast work of Ciudad de Dios 9a/+ at Santa Linya, France’s Sébastien Bouin repeated the 9a+ par excellence, La Rambla at Siurana and Italy’s young Stefano Carnati repeated Llamps i trons at Margalef.

Verhoeven managed to reach the chains of Ciudad de Dios on her second day, and later that day in the same incredible Santa Linya cave repeated the first pitch of La Fabela, graded 8c+. Ciudad de Dios had made international headline news in 2015 when it was repeated by 13-year-old Ashima Shiraishi.

Bouin's ascent of La Rambla is a sort of "revenge" since he had injured his back on the crux move of this route 2 years ago. Bouin has climbed a series of hard routes in the past including Chilam Balam, the famous 9b at Villanueva del Rosario in Spain.

An Italian team of top climbers recently reached Spain and celebrated an important goal: Stefano Carnati’s 50th 8c or harder. At Margalef the 19-year-old needed just two days to dispatch the 8c+/9a Llamps i trons.

TOPO: the crag Siurana

TOPO: the crag Margalef

Link: FB Stefano Carnati, Instagram Stefano Carnati, Instagram Seb Bouin, Instagram Anak Verhoeven, FB Matteo Pavana, Instagram The Vertical Eye