Sierra de Toix

Although it may sound crazy to some, the Sierra de Toix is, by far, the most popular and visited climbing crag in the entire province of Alicante. It could almost be said that there is no day of the year without a climber on its walls, as it is a place full of long and nice walls of perfect gray limestone.

These facts have consolidated the Sierra as the climbing paradise on Earth for many climbers from central and northern Europe who flee during the winter looking for the bonanzas of our friendly Mediterranean climate. In addition, many adventure companies offer their climbing courses in the sectors of the western part of the school, so that the “climbing ambient” is more than guaranteed.

As a result, the Sierra Toix currently offers an outstanding set of more than 130 routes, where you will mainly find slabs or almost vertical walls, with itineraries ranging from 10 to 150 meters long, very affordable difficulties, generally below the sixth grade, a minimum approach and a south / southwest orientation that will provide you with sun most of the day. Thereupon, this crag contains everything needed to become one of the best areas of easy routes in the entire peninsula, but the reality is that, in addition to great virtues, it also harbors important defects.

The foreign origin of most of its routes - with an implicit style towards British trad climbing - together with its anarchic evolution, both of the re-equipment and of the new routes, has given rise to a tidal wave of spits, parabolts, chemicals and cordinos that, on some occasions, makes it impossible to discern the line to follow, in addition to things as absurd and implausible as the existence of a bathroom tap to be used as an anchor on the “El Baile” route.

On the other hand, and despite their low difficulty, many of their routes should be considered as trad climbing routes, due to the great distances between bolts and the large number of loose rocks in the areas with ledges. As a general rule, these routes must be considered as potentially dangerous. The accidents occurred in recent years serve as an example: one of them, in 2019, took away the life of one of the crag's main bolters.

Although it already had a traditional climbing line such as the Espolón Limabán, opened in 1977 by M.Díez, J.Motos and Carlos Tudela, its first equipped routes date back to the 80s, and were generally the artwork of Swiss, English and German climbers.

There is no trustworthy source able to pinpoint the history and the main characters of these early years, but we do know that both Mark and Rowland Edwards were in charge of developing the Toix este and Toix TV sectors between 1987 and 1988, reaching the, at that time, mythical eighth grade level. During the first years of the 90s, the German Jens Muenchberg would take on a leading role promoting new sectors such as the Tropical Dreams or the Johanna, and during the final years of the 2000s, Juan Carlos Andrés and Bernardo Becker, the German couple Hettie and Kurt Kreutzenbeck, and the Teutonic climber Horst Urban, among others, would carry out the development of a large part of the sectors of Toix oeste, bolting a large number of single- and multipitching routes and creating some of the most famous and repeated routes in the entire crag.