Steep slops, scree, rocks faces... these are all things we've done before doing Colorado 14ers. No big deal. We happily pack up camp early in the morning, and start up the next valley towards Col d'Arrious. The initial climb off the valley floor starts out steep through the trees, but once it reaches the treeline, it become more gentle and turns into a very pleasant walk.
Most of the morning is spent walking in the low clouds, whose dampness along with the chill of the morning makes for pleasant hiking. Half way up the valley, we reach Cabane d'Arrious, which was suppose to be our stopping point for yesterdays hike. We are now starting to realize the foley of our planning to make each day longer. There is no way in hell we would have made it to this cabin with our sanity, our feet, or our marriage intact.
From there we headed down some boulders to Refuge d'Arremoulit. The refuge is very small, and very old, but would be a great place to spend the night. It's situated right on the edge of the high-alpine lake, with fantastic views of the local peaks.
From there we headed up towards Col du Palas, which is where our trek really started to turn for us. After the refuge, there we no real good signs on how to get to the Col. We eventually asked someone and they pointed us in the right directions. The trail wasn't very well worn, there weren't any signs, but we kind of knew where to head so we marched on.
Ok, no big deal. We head back to the bottom of the boulder field and go up the other direction. Again, there is no real path, but lots of cairns. We scramble like hell and eventually reach Col du Palas. I'm the first to reach the top, and as I peer over, it's nothing but scree and boulders as far as the eye can see. Sarah joins me a bit later, and we spend a good deal of time consulting the topo to ensure we're at the right Col.
There is suppose to be a lake on this side of the Col, but I can't see one, but I'm also convinced we're in the right place, so we press on. Eventually, as we scramble across the face of the mountain, a large-ish lake comes into view, lightening our mood a little bit.
From here, the guide book has one nice line that says, "Go down a short way on the east side of the pass and make a traverse NE on rocks toward the Port du Lavedan." A better description would be for it to read, "Traverse NE across the loose rocks death slide of screen towards the endless boulder field leading to the cliffs of bodily injury and death."
After traversing across the loose face of the one mountain, we reach the boulder field leading to Port du Lavedan. Here we pause to take a rest. Again, we consult the book as to where to head and read the same one line again. "Ok," we think, so we can just scramble up anywhere and head over the Col. We do a survey of the Col and the right side looks to be a cliff, but the left side look relatively easy. You have to head up steeply at first, but then you can make a horizontal traverse to the Col, which sure beats climbing a cliff with no gear.
The Left side still looks easier
Remind me to email that a-hole author...
After a short discussion, we decide that it's better to climb down the wall than to go back down and around. The latter would take up another hour, and by this point, we're ready to hit up the refuge and relax a bit. I head down the cliff first. Thankfully, the wall has small ledges down the entire face that allowed us to lower ourselves from ledge to ledge. The further down we get, the dodgier the moves get, and we eventually have to take off our packs and lower them down ahead of ourselves. Once I get within 15' of the bottom, I finally say "Screw it" and just throw my bag down to the bottom, fragile camera be damned. A few ledges later we are both back on solid ground, by which I mean loose scree and small rocks.
The view from the other side. We came down the right hand side.
We came down the middle of this section
The trail continues down the valley over boulders as far as the eye can see. Eventually the well worn trail turns into another boulder field with more cairns going in every direction. We consult the topo map, and decide to just plow ahead. To make matters worse on the way down, not only was the trail unmarked, but the clouds began to close in, so we had very little visibility. That just made our sense of not knowing where we were that much worse because we couldn't see down the valley to judge if we were headed in the right general direction.
After two hours of this, Sarah was getting pretty demoralized and just wanted to be done. I encouraged her forward and promised that the refuge was just around the corner (which of course was a lie.) After an eternity, we finally round a tight bend and there is the refuge, like 40 feet in front of us. To say we were ecstatic is probably an understatement.
We quickly drop our packs, refill our empty water bladders, kick off our shoes and lay down on the rocks. The debate begins, do we head down further to our pre-planned destination at the bottom of the valley, or just stay in the refuge like the book tells you to? By our calculation, our pre-planned stop is another 2 hours down the mountain.
The trail follows a river all the way down the valley, so we decide to just follow the river as far as we can and then pitch our tent for the night. We make it for about another hour before we call it quits, and quickly pitch our tent along the trail next to the river. After bathing, cooking, we promptly fall asleep for the rest of the night.
The next day, while laying in the tent reading our guidebook, Sarah discovers a section called, "Grading and Timing of Walks." We hadn't noticed this section before. It goes on to explain that all of the 45 stages have been graded from 1 to 3, with 3 being the easiest. Only 4 days are graded three. It says that most days are graded 2 which it describes as, "A full days walk with a fair amount of climbing and descending. Most of the time the route uses paths that are reasonable well way marked and can be followed easily."
Day 1 of our trip was a 2, which we had no issues with. It was a very pleasant walk. Long, but not overly difficult. The description of walks graded 1 is as follows: "The few walks that have been graded 1 are suitable only for experienced well trained mountaineers who are accustomed to very strenuous days. These walks are often very long and demanding. There is a lot of rough terrain to be tackled. These days involve long climbs, long sections without paths or way marks, some exposed sections that require care and snowfields that have to be crossed.
"Surely" we think to ourselves, "yesterday must have been a 1." But we were wrong. If you continue reading, there is another grade that we missed all together. E... "E stands for Exceptional. This category contains some very demanding and difficult walks with steep and potentially dangerous exposed sections that require great care on the part of the walkers carrying heavy loads. Here and there some moderate scrambling is necessary, and steep snow slopes and glacier remains have to be crossed. The E walks often enter remote areas where paths and way marks are not to be found. Your navigation capabilities will be put to a serious test! There are only 3 days rated E."
Now it all makes sense. We picked one of the three hardest days on the entire route for our second day. The reason we wasted so many hours trying to find the trail is because there isn't a trail. It's not that we missed them, they don't exist. That would have been a fantastic piece of knowledge to have before we left Refuge d'Arremoulit !
Now that we had a little more knowledge on how the days are rated, we look ahead to the rest of our trip. Of course, as luck would have it, not only did we have more 1's to look forward to, we also ended up having all three of the E's on our route. Nice. At this point we start to do some alternate planning, which I will save for another blog post seeing as this one has already set a Brian Bishop record for length.
Looking back, the part that made the day hardest for me was not the actual physical strain, challenge, or length of the hike, but the mental part of constantly wondering if I'm in the right place and following the right cairns. If we could do it all again, I would certainly tackle all of the E's, but I would be more mentally prepared to just trust my skills with the topo map, and understand that there aren't going to be signs along the way.
Later in the trip, we ran into a French couple that we had seen on the approach to Refuge d'Arremoulit early in the morning. They knew about the E route and so took an easier way. They stayed the night at Arremoulit and said that at 11pm that night a man came wandering into camp. He had tried to take the same route that Sarah and I did, got lost for 11 hours, and eventually found his way back to Arremoulit. Luckily for us, I'm better with a map than that poor gentleman!
Day 0
Day 1
Day 2
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