Mau and I went to Bernal for the year’s last climb.
We didn’t count on having too many climbers at the mountain. Most of them were from
UNAM’s intermediate climbing course and they had all of the routes virtually crowded. We needed to apply some speed climbing tricks in order to have our own rythm…
We climbed first the Northwest Ridge (7 pitches, 5.10a, 350 m) in about 2 hours, passing two parties over the first 3 pitches. In order to do this, we had to runout most of that section and place our own hanging belays around bushes and flakes/knobs (it was fun to see the students’ faces as we made our way to the top of the wall in an excellent time and using such trickery 
).
Then we headed to the east face after jumping another 3 parties on the descent rappels (they noticed that we were going fast, so they “agreed” to let us pass by using their ropes).
Once at the base, we saw that Bernalina (5 pitches, 5.8, 250 m) had no people in it, so we opted to do it before the Southeast Ridge (which is a bit short and faster to climb). Once at the first belay I noticed that the Southeast Ridge had 2 parties in it, so it was a good choice to do Bernalina first 
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At the shoulder, we passed another 3 parties (the 2 from the southeast route and the other from our own route). There I met Farfán (a long time friend and UNAM’s climbing instructor); we had a small talk while I was body-belaying Mau and I asked him to let us pass them on the last pitch to the summit, he quickly agreed. We finished the route in 1 hour 40 minutes.
We reached the summit for the 2nd time in the day and noticed that another 2 parties (which began climbing the northwest route just after we raced through the previous 2 parties), were reaching the top of the wall. Mau and I had a silent and perverse grin in our faces when they noticed that we were on the top for the 2nd time and before them 
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We got tired of encountering too many people in our day of climbing, so we opted to finish the torture and took a rest in the summit. We ate cookies, drank water and enjoyed the view as the sun came down. Then we headed to the rappels and “kindly” asked for permission to use the existing ropes again. We got to the car in 20 minutes, headed to Aculco for eating tacos and then drove back home.
The final score: 12 pitches (5.6-5.10a), 600 m, 8 parties passed, 7 hours (car to car) 
