Pyrenees Day 10: Straight Up
Looking at the sheer cliffs dropping down to the Pineta valley is quite a puzzling experience when you know that somehow your trail ends up on the other side. Mark and I spent much of the prior day wondering exactly where the trail would ascend, agreeing that none of the possibilities looked very promising. Still, the next morning we delivered ourselves to the mercy of the red-and-white trail blazes. Unsurprizingly, the blazes led us up, up, and then up some more. What followed was a four-limbed clamber lasting over 3 hours and gaining about 1200 meters elevation in about 2km, which made for an average grade of 60%. Fortunately, it was early enough to be cool and shady most of the way, and therefore not nearly as difficult as we had feared.
As we stopped to snack and rest at the top of the pass, just within the border of the Ordesa and Monte Perdido National Park, we were faced with a choice between the high road and the low road. The original GR11 continued up, hugging the bald rocks of the Las Olas peak above the Anisclo valley. However, complaints about the dangers of this route in wet and snowy conditions (i.e. most of the year) led the trail committee to change teh official route to descend into the valley and climb up on the other side. The weather conditions that day were near-perfect, however, and we didn´t like the idea of losing our hard-earned altitude this quickly, so we opted for the high road after some deliberation.
As it turned out, the Las Olas passage wasn´t nearly as tough as we expected. It had been a very dry September, and there were no wet rocks or snow fields in our path. We used the chain climbing aids attached to the rocks, but in these conditions they were not at all necessary. A couple of times the path skirted along a ledge, with vertical cliffs above and below, but it was never objectively dangerous, and we kept our subjective fear of heights reasonably under control.
We then had the pleasant experience of actually having to descend to reach the next ¨pass¨ into the Ordesa valley. We reached a refugio around 5 pm, but our plan was to go slightly further. The night before I met a Spanish guy who recommended we take a detour into France via the so-called ¨Breach of Roland¨ to see some of the more spectacular scenery in the National Park. This detour would bring us into Torla the next day from a north-westerly direction, a significantly longer route that required us to get as far as possible on the previous day. Although we were both quite tired, we decided to walk a couple more kilometers and find a place to camp.
We filled all our water bottles at the refugio´s painfully slow trickle of a water supply because we were warned that there was no water in the mountains above due to the dry weather and the limestone foundation of the valley, which quickly drained all water to the bottom. The refugio´s water supply drew from the same groundwater and was on its last leg as well. Our path from the refugio deviated from the GR11 trail, but was very well-marked with cairns, since it was used by thousands of French hikers who come into the park via this route. After walking a reasonable distance away from the refugio, we pitched our tent in a flat area among the surrounding white rocks. Mark fixed some pasta with mushroom soup concentrate that looked and tasted like cement, but I added some ham to my portion, which made it somewhat more palatable.
As we stopped to snack and rest at the top of the pass, just within the border of the Ordesa and Monte Perdido National Park, we were faced with a choice between the high road and the low road. The original GR11 continued up, hugging the bald rocks of the Las Olas peak above the Anisclo valley. However, complaints about the dangers of this route in wet and snowy conditions (i.e. most of the year) led the trail committee to change teh official route to descend into the valley and climb up on the other side. The weather conditions that day were near-perfect, however, and we didn´t like the idea of losing our hard-earned altitude this quickly, so we opted for the high road after some deliberation.
As it turned out, the Las Olas passage wasn´t nearly as tough as we expected. It had been a very dry September, and there were no wet rocks or snow fields in our path. We used the chain climbing aids attached to the rocks, but in these conditions they were not at all necessary. A couple of times the path skirted along a ledge, with vertical cliffs above and below, but it was never objectively dangerous, and we kept our subjective fear of heights reasonably under control.
We then had the pleasant experience of actually having to descend to reach the next ¨pass¨ into the Ordesa valley. We reached a refugio around 5 pm, but our plan was to go slightly further. The night before I met a Spanish guy who recommended we take a detour into France via the so-called ¨Breach of Roland¨ to see some of the more spectacular scenery in the National Park. This detour would bring us into Torla the next day from a north-westerly direction, a significantly longer route that required us to get as far as possible on the previous day. Although we were both quite tired, we decided to walk a couple more kilometers and find a place to camp.
We filled all our water bottles at the refugio´s painfully slow trickle of a water supply because we were warned that there was no water in the mountains above due to the dry weather and the limestone foundation of the valley, which quickly drained all water to the bottom. The refugio´s water supply drew from the same groundwater and was on its last leg as well. Our path from the refugio deviated from the GR11 trail, but was very well-marked with cairns, since it was used by thousands of French hikers who come into the park via this route. After walking a reasonable distance away from the refugio, we pitched our tent in a flat area among the surrounding white rocks. Mark fixed some pasta with mushroom soup concentrate that looked and tasted like cement, but I added some ham to my portion, which made it somewhat more palatable.
posted by Dmitri Evseev at 9:11 PM
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