El Yelmo en la Pedriza

On Friday, right after my second class, Javier took me for a hike to El Yelmo, which is a summit in the Pedriza range, in the Sierra de Guadarrama, about 30mn north of Madrid. The landscape  there is fantastic, very mineral, with a low bush vegetation.

The rocks of La Pedriza are some kind of granite, which explains for the multiple shapes of boulders found in the range. The place also is a climber paradise, with hundreds of boulders and many walls of various difficulties. El Yelmo itself has about ten different routes. The approach we took was mere scrambling on large slabs of rock plus a squeeze of twenty meters or so through a narrow crack.

The view from the 1,700m top is exceptional, with the Madrid skyline (the four tall towers in the centre of Madrid) partly visible in the background and the upper range of La Pedriza on the other side. (The weather was so nice that it was warm even at the top.)

We saw many ibex while going both up and down, including two males with large horns as dusk was settling in. And we managed to get back to the car just before dark. Having such a great range that near to Madrid is a terrific bonus for an already very exciting city!