Exploring the Torrent de s'Arboceret
The north-east of Mallorca has its own small mountain range that is much less well known than its bigger brother the Tramuntana. However there is a lot to discover here too - like this remote canyon.
Down a mildly technical canyon in the popular Parc Llevant
The island of Mallorca is well known for its stunning canyons that have been carved into the rock by millions of years of rain water crashing down the mountains into the sea. Definitely the most well known and most monumental of these is the Torrent de Pareis in the Tramuntana mountains (which I visited during 2020). So when I found a blog post by some locals about a canyon in the Parc Llevant close to where I live I had to take a look.
From what I gathered in the blog post there are a few points in the torrent that need to be rappelled - still I packed light with only a 30 meter rope (remember that for later) and the basics. To access the canyon one has to hike up from the Parcs information center to the former internment camp under the Franco regime (I highly recommend reading up on this topic!) and from there to the Coll de na Pastora. From there the descent through the bushes towards the canyon itself starts and once in there, there is only one way - down down down.
The first part of the torrent is rather boring to be honest. A small rocky river bed through the thorny bushes. However once the thing gets narrower and steeper in the second the fun (in terms of scrambling, rappelling and landscape watching) starts.
The last part wides and offers views of some really beautiful and rugged rock towers and formations. I dubbed these „tiny Fitzroy“. Finally the torrent crosses a wide hiking path shortly before reaching the beach.
A quick technical note: Most of the going is easy to medium scrambling but there are four possible rappels in total. Only the last one is actually worth bringing a rope (the other three are easy downclimbs) and that one is about 25 meters high (aka 10 meters too far for my 30 meter rope - so I had to downclimb the rest). The whole loop is about 16 kilometers that took me about five hours with breaks (solo and moving quickly - so if you are in a group except to be out there a whole day!).