The clouds were low when we went to bed and they got even lower through the night. It rained a little through the night, but not hard. When I woke up at 7, we were in another fog/mist. I figured since we had backtracked to town for a flat spot to sleep, I could backtrack to the auberge to partake of porcelain. Pam stayed in bed.
When I got back to the tent, we decided to just take it nice and slow this morning to allow the sun to burn the fog off. We cooked breakfast from inside the tent and ate breakfast in bed once again (what a sweetheart my wife has for a husband). While we were eating, Sabrina packed up and left.
We got started hiking at a rather unusual time for us–10a. We started out with the clouds just a few hundred feet above us. It wasn’t long before we hiked up into them and then we stayed in them all day. For the second day in a row, we would hike over peaks in the Pyrenees and not see anything of the scenery around us.
After about a 500′ gain (of the 3700′ climb we had in store for us today) we entered a gully which contained a temperate rain forest. There were small caves in the walls with extremely lush vegetation. Even though we were climbing steadily up the ravine, we didn’t notice it because there was so much to see. There’s abandoned pipe line sections periodically. Back in the ’50s, there was an attempt to create a hydro-electric facility in the gully. The dream wasn’t actually realized until 2008. Part of the original attempt included a 600 meter long tunnel to direct the water flow. We saw the mouth of the tunnel above us but didn’t go in.
After leaving the gully, we climbed. And climbed. And climbed some more. Since we were in a cloud, it was in a constant mist with an occasional rain. It was really a pleasant way to climb–cool and comfortable. It turns out I’m wearing so many quick drying clothes that I actually leave dry footprints behind me in the rain.
It would have been nice to see some of the scenery around us, especially after we emerged from the forest. We leapfrogged with a French man we have been hiking with for the last few days. Unfortunately, he speaks as much English as we do French so we just gesture to each other quite a bit. He seems like a really nice guy–we catch him singing a lot when he doesn’t realize we’re around. We passed him at our first “summit” of the day.
For a while, we thought the sun might make an appearance after we left our French friend cooking lunch. We went around the back side of the mountain and the fog got much thicker and darker. As we were climbing, we heard a woman scream. We didn’t know what was happening. We stayed quiet to try to hear if there was another yell. As we climbed, me ran into a French woman we had met yesterday. Anne-Laure was hiking yesterday in open toed sandals. We were passing through some fresh cut trail with lots of thorns. We really felt for her, but she was very happy and said she only had 3 more days to hike and that, yes, she had made a mistake with the shoes. Today, she came towards us very happy to see other people. She had lost the trail and was circling around to try to find where it went. We all worked together to get back on track.
The final 600′ of our 3700′ climb was on an old gravel road. I’m sure on a normal clear day we would have had amazing views. Anne-Laure took a break once we got to the road and we kept going. She later passed us when we took a break. Near the top, we caught up with her again. She was a little dispirited saying that it’s hard to keep going when you can only see 50′ around you.
Not 5 minutes after we left Anne-Laure, the sky turned blue and the fog lifted–in a very tight circle around us. There was fog all around us, but we were walking in a sun bubble. We were so close to the top that we thought we were going to have views at the summit. Nay nay. All we got at the summit were pictures from other people who had been sittting up there for a couple hours and had an occasional clear window. We did meet another French man that was cooking his lunch and drying his tent. Andre and I started talking gear. Pam’s eyes started to glaze but I was showing Andre our ZPacks tent. He really liked the weight of it.
There was only about 1.5 miles left to the refuge. We thought we might camp out front of it or possibly even get a bed if there were any available. The best part of the walk is that it was all down hill from our 5400′ summit without a view. As we were walking the trail (and having a hard time seeing the markers because the fog had gotten dense again) we practically stumbled on the building.
We ended up getting a room to ourselves. The poor hostess had to sleep in a tent and give us her room. We thought we might get to keep her dog with us all night–she got up on the bed with me and slept while I was typing. With the refuge, we got a family style dinner. The refuge holds 19 people and allows camping outside as well. There were 22 people at dinner: 11 who spoke French, 9 who spoke Spanish, and 2 lone Americans that could only pick up about every 20th word. Everyone was very accommodating to us and tried to include us in the discussions but we were slightly overwhelmed.
Showers, home cooked 3 course meal, beer, wine, water, bread, and beds to stretch out in–hiker paradise.
Tenacity. Climbing in a fog bubble. You persisted! Well done!
No choice with slopes to great to pitch a tent–thanks