Today was the hardest day of hiking in my life. Grand Canyon; piece of cake. Maroon Bells; no problem after 3 days adjustment to altitude. Philmont twice as a Boy Scout; bring it on again. This all comes back to the problem I mentioned when we started the Camino–the concept of switchbacks hasn’t made it back to the old world.
Granted, we didn’t start out at a reasonable time. Since we had paid 10 Euros for a level bed, shower, and breakfast, we wanted to get our money’s worth. Actually any one of those 3 items was worth the money. We got up and had breakfast with Jenny (the owner of the estate), Nadja, and Abder. Jenny showed us all around her lovely home and made us feel like family. We spent a pleasant breakfast with good conversation. Abder (pronounced “Ab dee” for us Americans) is from Marseilles (take my word for this, you just pronounced it wrong. We butcher the French language).
Jenny drove us back to the GR10 on the far edge of town. Nadja is taking a day or two off, so she said her goodbyes and stayed back at the estate. Once Jenny returned home, we said our goodbyes to Abder and he started flying up the hill. There are two reasons we didn’t hike with Abder: 1) he is young and in great shape, we wouldn’t be able to keep up and we didn’t want to slow him down; and 2) we wanted to backtrack a bit through town to cover all of the trail. Jenny dropped us off further than we got picked up. We didn’t come to France to hike most of the GR10.
The backtracking was well rewarded. Bidarray is a charming village built around the church in the center of town. We found a public water closet (aka bathroom) and took full advantage. The facilities at Jenny’s were wonderful, but it was a close space with no sound dampening, if you get my drift. Pam suddenly became shy. Let me tell you, after spending 42 hours straight with her in a tent, she makes all the same noises any man does (with an amplitude factor thrown in as well).
We also found a little grocery store to buy some chees, olives, crackers, and fruit. After necessities completed, we sat on the plaza by the church and had a coke at the cafe before hitting the road. It was 11 before we actually started hiking.
I tried a new approach and didn’t actually tell Pam what to expect today so she wouldn’t fixate on it, but we had a 3000′ (that’s right, three thousand feet) in just about 3 miles. This was a steep climb and after the first 1500′, exclusively in the sun. Most of the trail was very rocky. For anyone familiar with The Appalachian Trail, this was like hiking in the Whites without benefit of trees. The trail was almost non existent, just a rock scramble between markers. It kicked our ass.
The views were amazing. We didn’t realize until we got past the summit, that we were walking up the backside of the mountain and the front side was pretty much a sheer drop down to the valley. We felt like we were on top of the world.
At one point, we did find a little shade beside a rock outcropping and we stopped for some lunch. We thought we had bought enough cheese for 2 or 3 meals, olives for a couple of days, and fruit to last all day. We polished it all off in one siting. We even struggled over who got to drink the olive juice.
I’ve also been trying to drink more (and remind Pam to drink more). I carried 3 liters and drank it all before the top. Pam had drank more than two. We found a water supply for the horses near the top and got another 2 liters thinking that would hold us.
3300′ is really tall when you are near sea level. We were on the tallest mountain in the region and just kept climbing. Every time we thought we were reaching the summit, a higher part of the mountain was revealed. The guidebook says 3 hours and 5 minutes to the top. We took 6 hours and 10 minutes–proving once again that publishing a trail guide with times instead of distances is the most asinine thing I’ve ever heard of.
We were hoping to make it to Saint-Etienne-de-Baigorry today so we could make St Jean tomorrow after the thunderstorms are done. Instead, we made it a little over half way today, were completely out of water when we started to descend, and both weak legged from carrying too heavy of packs. Now we are sitting in a low point between two peaks and the clouds are already rolling in below us. We did find water and filled up everything we have.
We are not alone though. There are several other people camping just slightly below us. All the flat spots in the saddle were gone which forced us to climb higher to find a rock shelf big enough for the tent. I tried using my new jet boil stove to make supper tonight. The instructions for the minestrone were in French, so I scorched it. We were so hungry, we ate it anyway. We just put crackers in it so we couldn’t tell the cracker crunch from the burnt crunch.
We have a pretty good spot in the middle of a beechwood forest. We can see both sides of the mountain from our camping spot. I love thunderstorms and feel pretty secure with where we are. Pam is scared to death of storms. It will be an interesting night. We won’t get out of the tent until the storm is past–who knows how long that will be.
