Start the season and ice cazadares already have prepared their weapons. Jorge, the youngest of them all, calls me on December 29, "Elegy" is in good condition. I’m climbing in Alicante, the little sun, escaping the bad weather that prevailed throughout the peninsula. Begin to organize to try to get out of trip that night and the next day to try to climb the track. A few hours later I receive another call from the shelter Elola; is raining seas, zero visibility and waterfalls coming down everywhere. I relax and try to forget about the missed opportunity. Given that Elegy was around ten years without cost me away form the feeling of frustration. To forget about it, I’m going to spend New Year’s Eve with friends at the shelter of the Pedriza.


 
Day 1 dawns snowing in Manzanares. I am preparing the material for mountaineering course I will take that same weekend in Gredos and the phone rings again, Isra calls from the Cirque de Gredos to tell me that, miraculously, Elegy still in place, clearly visible Barrerones from chairing the Circo de Gredos in the most vertical of the upper wall of the blade of Knives, as some friends, our little third wall. But I have to work Saturday and Sunday, start reckoning, I try to sort ideas, look at the forecast, I defer the work and finally decided to fulfill my work obligations even though the tears I see as escapes me that gem’s icy hands. As you see, to that of ice climbing is essential to have good friends who remember you when conditions are good, and those same friends are the ones that had just waited until Saturday to work to propose a night excursion to "Elegy" . As for these things I’m pretty facile issues did not need much effort to convince and, at 18:30 pm on Saturday 2 December, was opening track like crazy to see Elegy completely before nightfall. As usually happens when one is motivated and scale with good friends, everything flowed and made the track fast enough to reach the shelter when Alvaro e Isra still had a hot dinner. 

The next three days I had to continue my work as a guide and teacher of climbing, watching the evolution of all those magical lines that only appear in some winters in Gredos. On Tuesday afternoon, return to the shelter Elola, conditions are good but again it’s getting dark. Again George convinces me to go climbing with friends and do not need enemies, with the last light of day, we entered the "Avila" (6a). This was the first track I climbed almost did not know when or adjust your feet cat and now I see with all the climbing spikes his first feature, and I do not understand that I am the protagonist. After writhe to and fro to get the crampons cling to a strip of granite while I stretch like a contortionist to reach the ice, came to the first meeting. Jorge long ago and quickly the second abseil to reach the shelter before we take the anger Alvaro to go play at that hour of the evening while dinner gets cold. Isra welcomes us with the same smile as always, seems to understand very well because we got all that mess of spikes on a road that we have done several times with cat’s feet but, nevertheless, continues to brighten as much or more us.

Wednesday, 6 January, last show at the Circus, last night have come to the shelter Carlos Gallego, Carlos Alberto Sepulveda and Ogallar. The motivation overflowing from the windows of the shelter. Charles G., Sepu and Jorge Elegy going to go so I decided to make their mark to reach it and climb "North Pole" with Carlos O. When we reached the Hoya Anton, the three members of the first roped disappear and not heard anything back from them until 6 pm when I meet them at the sanctuary, smiling and satisfied with his two new openings in the Hill area orchards. Meanwhile, I have no choice but to reluctantly open the trail back to the base of the main wall of the Razor Blade. We tried to climb "north pole" and half of the first long, after repeatedly with my crampons scratching a slab of granite with a thin layer Verglas, start to retreat to the base. As it is still early, I propose to Carlos approach the right side of the wall. To the right of way "Rubén Blades" is a gully that has not yet been scaled and it looks interesting. If I know the effort that would cost me to go through there, I had gone to the "corridor of the course" and we had finished the day with a little more tranquil. The view from the initial meeting was not very hopeful, a dihedral with some specks of snow and ice stuck behind a small rock ceiling from which hung some icicles. In the end, between gasps of effort and trembling with fear, came to a big block in which amount the meeting. The second feature seems a little more affordable but as I climb the first few meters, I realize that he was mistaken. I start beating two blocks embedded in a wide crack in a support my monopoint millimeter strips and fixing the axes in some ice hummocks appear to be clumps of grass. What I then do not encourage me too, an almost vertical wall covered with Verglas, came to its base, and when I was thinking about how to get out of there, there is a fissure in which I put two alliens. I continue rising, begin to be safe distance, like a 3 or 4 meters and all the ice around me has no more than 3 cm thick. A couple of feet above my head I sense a ledge covered with snow which I hope will hide some ice. I climb a little more and notice my companion of the "glitches" I am having. He reached the snow, hit it with my ice axes, the first three are hopeless stuck, just find powder snow, I go tell my partner, gently twist the body, I look at another point in the fridge and I drop my ice ax on that area, nails and shot towards the bottom to verify its strength. The expression on my face must have changed completely in that time, the gesture gave way to tense smile and relief. I got out to the ledge, climb a little further and set up the meeting that shortly after I met Charles to celebrate the opening with a hug and a smile.

After falling to the shelter, holding together the rest from friends and return home to continue to dream of such thin ice lines that we both enjoy