Pyrenees Haute Route - Day 1

Our first day of hiking on the HRP was going to take us from the Spanish Ski resort of Candanchu and end past Refuge Pombie on the French side of the border.  We awoke before dawn, took one last shower, and headed out the door to enjoy the cool morning air.

The first hour of hiking was actually along the small road connecting the two ski resorts.  It doesn't make for good hiking, but the views were still amazing.

After reaching the resort of Astun, the trail turns up the mountain and heads north through a grassy mountainside, following a deep ravine.

We eventually reach Col des Moines on the French/Spanish Border, and start back down the mountain on the French side.

The trek to the valley floor was beautiful, down more grassy fields filled with herds of sheep, cows and horses.

From this side of the valley, we had great views of the Pic du Midi d'Ossau, which is kind of like the Matterhorn of the Pyrenees.  It's distinctive shape shows up on advertisements for the area, and is distinctive from very far way.

Upon reaching the valley floor, we turn east and head up the other side of the valley, underneath Pic du Midi, and up to Col de Peyreget.

From Col de Payreget, we could see down to Refuge de Pombie, the first manned refuge on our trip, but not our final destination for the day.

 An hour later we reach the refuge, and sit down for an hour to relax.  It's at this point that I'd like to pause, and say something about how Sarah and I plan for our trips.  On a normal trip, we look at the guide book, and it'll say that a trip should take 12 days.  We look at the mileage, and based off our best guess of our abilities, we do it in 7 days.  This trip was a little different.  No guidebooks lists actual mileages for each stage, only the number of hours that it should take you.  No problem I think, we can just knock off a few extra hours each day and it'll be just like Switzerland where we did a "15-day" trek in 8 days.

Well each guidebook by the Cicerone company (who I highly recommend if you're hiking in Europe BTW) is written by a different person.  Apparently  Ton Joosten, who wrote this book, doesn't f*** around.  Once we reach Pombie, the recommended stop for the day, and realized that our Bishop itinerary had another couple of hours on it, we began to realize that this was no ordinary trip that's dumbed down for the lazy hiker.  This trip means business, and it's business is kicking Brian's ass.

Back to the trek though.  After soaking our feet and looking at the map a dozen more times, we decide to just keep going and see how far we get.  We headed down the valley for another two hours until we reach a large field prior to the road, and decided to pitch the tent for the night.  We were about half-way through our added mileage but were too tired to think about climbing back up again to the next refuge.

It ended up being a fantastic campsite, with fresh water to bath in, and gurgling sounds to lull us to sleep.  We would need all the rest we could get for the next day.  Our day from hell.

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Day 1

Pyrenees Haute Route - Day 0

For this years vacation extravaganza, Sarah and I had originally planned to head down to Peru to do a few different trails in the Andes.  After looking at ticket prices, however, we decided that Peru was too expensive.  I pulled up the Kayak Explore site and decided we would fly to the cheapest place we could find, and plan the hike from there.  Turns out, Barcelona was the cheapest ticket in July.

Barcelona?  No problem, that's near the Pyrenees Alps.  We pulled out our Life List and look at what was closest to Barcelona.  The three trails that were the closest, and are closely related to each other, were the Grande  Randonee (GR) 10 in France, the GR 11 in Spain, and the Pyrenees Haute Route (abbreviated HRP.)  All three trails start at the Atlantic, traverse the Pyrenees and end at the Mediterranean Sea.  As you might expect, the HRP is right between the two, taking a generally high route right along the French/Spanish border.

As you could probably tell from the title of this post, we chose the HRP for our trip.  After much planning (well, not really) our trip began on the 18th of July, and it did not start well.  We flew American Airlines from Denver to Miami and the on to Barcelona.  The first flight went fine, but the second flight was awful.  After we sat down, I noticed that the TV closest to us didn't work.  No biggie, I can just look at the next one.  Then I tried to plug in my headphones.  The entire row of headphone jacks was dead.  No problem, I can just read my book then since I can't watch the movie or listed to the music.  All of the lights in our row were dead as well.  WTF!  When I spend $1000 on a ticket, there are a few things that I expect.  TV, sound, and a reading light are right at the top of that list.  Fail for American Airlines.

We eventually arrive in Barcelona, and since we carried on our backpacks, we headed straight to customs which we passed with no issue.  We knew that we had a handful of buses that we needed to catch in order to get to Candanchu that night, which is where our hotel reservation was.  First we had to take a bus to the other terminal where the train station was.  As we arrive at the train station, we realize we probably don't have time to catch the train.  Plan B: run back to the terminal and grab a taxi.  Luckily for us, the traffic was horrible due to an accident and we barely made our bus, arriving with about 5 minutes to spare.

The first bus ride was about 3 hours and got us to the town of Huesca.  That is where our planning ended.  We went into the bus station, knowing that we had to get to the town of Jaca next.  Luckily for us, a bus was leaving for Jaca within 20 minutes.  Nice!  We grab that bus and an hour later arrive in the town of Jaca.
Jaca was a larger town, so we knew that we needed to take advantage and buy supplies.  We hunted down a few stores and bought fresh bread, chorizo, and a pocket knife.  After that, we had a 3 hour wait until the next bus.

After burning time walking around town, checking out the historic building, we finally caught the bus for the 45 minute ride up to Candanchu.  We arrive at our hotel, Hotel Edelweiss, at around 8pm, had a quick look around town, and headed to bed for one final night on a real mattress.

The whole day felt like an episode from The Amazing Race.  Lots of running, poor Spanish, and basically fumbling about trying to get where we needed to go.  In the end we made it, and slept like babies for the rest of the night.

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Day 0
Day 1