In May, Giuseppe “Beppe” Torre, Rudy Salinas (both Mexico), Rodrigo Fica (Chile), Jesus Ibarz, and I (both Catalan) opened a new route on El Gigante in Mexico. We spent 10 days on the wall, first fixing lines from the ground, then climbing capsule style to the top. We free-climbed many of the pitches on the ascent and successfully redpointed four additional pitches after topping out the wall. The sixth pitch remains to be free-climbed on lead, as we were only able top-rope it (7c+). We called the climb Amapola Express (860m, 7c A0).

The line mostly follows the left side of the wall, first through big roofs then following superb dihedrals and cracks to the top. The first half of the climb is fragile and extremely loose, but we cleaned it and now the climb is much more enjoyable. The rock on the second part is really solid, and it feels like climbing on El Cap; it’s rhyolite, so it’s like climbing on good granite but with a smoother texture. The route is semi-protected with bolts on the hard-to-protect pitches (approximately 60 not including anchors), but we climbed clean on the cracks and the sections where we were able to use gear. The route Yawira Batú (Buil-García, AAJ 2000) crosses our line about 450m up the wall, as does Man on Fire (Bluementhal-Catlin-Tolle-Longoria-Scott, AAJ 2004) on the upper part; we undoubtedly shared one pitch on the upper wall with Tehué (Almada-Buil, AAJ 2014).

Oriol Anglada, Catalan