Echo Valley
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Echo Valley is rapidly becoming one of the Costa Blanca's most important climbing areas. It is a remote and unspoilt valley dotted with spectacular cliffs and crags. Nearly all the development work here has been done by either Rowland Edwards or his son Mark who run the Compass West school of rock climbing. Development continues to this day. 

Echo Valley Panorama
Panorama of Echo Valley showing the back end of El Ponoch to the left and Echo 2 up on the right.

Thanks to Trent Rosenbaum for the photos and Chris Lilley for the stitching work.

Character

Echo Valley has a huge range of routes from simple single pitch routes at grade F2 to long multi-pitch monsters at F8. The vast majority of these are purely trad routes but a few are protected by a combination of trad gear and ENPs. Check out the ENP section of The Climbing page for details of this unique protection technique.

 

Rowland Edwards, who has done so much to open up this area and to document it in the RockFax guide, has recently posted the following:

"Please use the abseil provided on the Echo 1 and 2 crags. Avoid walking down the back of the crag and creating new, and unnecessary foot paths ( and erosion). We have already lost a number of crags in Spain due to careless behaviour by climbers- not always Brits. We all love these areas so let's keep them as near to how we found them in the first place."

Tips

bulletThe track in has now been concreted even further up into the valley although it still doesn't reach as far as Echo 2.
bulletEspolon de Echo is described in the guide as having loose rock. This is particularly true of the first pitch and serious caution should be applied. A friend of mine took a serious fall off this when a hold came away in his hand. Fortunately the belayer had had the sense to attach herself to the rock before the route was started.

 

View of Echo 2 from Castillio  

View of Echo 2 from Castillio

Thanks to Simon Caldwell		 Echo 2

Echo 2

Thanks to Juan Llorens

 

Compass West Topos

The Edwards family have done further development in the Echo Valley and have add new and exciting routes. Check out the following links to the Compass West website for topos to other developed crags:

Dos Hermanos

Dos Hermanos

Thanks to Tom Phillips, of Abdet.com, for allowing me to  use this image.

El Lomo y Cola del Leon. (The back and tail of the lion)

Full scale crag with 19 routes from VD to 7b

Dos Hermanos

Fancy a tyrolean traverse?

Penya Rock

A number of harder, long multi-pitch routes.

Pleasure Domes

Over forty new routes ranging from S to E5+

Aguja de Pilar - Penya Rock

This is an exciting article detailing the new developments on the Aguja de Pilar in the Echo Valley. 

 

Older Topos

The previous version of the Rockfax guide (Edition 3, published in 2001) had further topos for Echo Valley, including the Echo Placa and Haunted Walls. These were left out of the current edition for space reasons. However, they can be found here on the Rockfax website.

 

Vote for own Favourite

Vote for your own favourite routes by using this page, Favourite Routes, and I'll add your tips to this page.