Climbing in Picos de Europa

The Picos de Europa entry on this site centers on a single, focused climbing document: ORBAYU [full movie] a climbing Odyssey with Nina Caprez and Cédric Lachat. The film follows a 500‑metre, 13‑pitch line on the Naranjo de Bulnes (Picu Urriellu), recorded at around 2,000 m elevation, and captures an attempt by Nina Caprez and Cédric Lachat in spring 2014. Photography by Julien Nadiras, Diego Defila and Sam Bié keeps the camera close to the rock, while the directors Mathieu Rivoire and Julien Nadiras shape the footage into a study of sustained technical climbing at altitude.

Viewed alongside the Picos de Europa’s geography — the range is a compact segment of the Cantabrian Mountains, extending roughly 20 km and rising to peaks such as Torre de Cerredo — the film reads as a portrait of committed, long multi‑pitch sport climbing. The route’s sustained difficulty and an 8c crux pitch are foregrounded, but the piece spends as much time on rhythm, team decisions and the psychological load of committing to a single, long line as on individual moves. For anyone interested in how a high‑altitude, multi‑pitch sport route is attempted, the film is a tightly edited record of sequence reading, exposure and the interdependence of partners on steep limestone walls.