- Distance: 13.3km
- Ascent/Descent: 1404m up, 212m down
- Time: 6 hr 45 min
Great day, wonderful mountains, crowded trails.
"Hey there's a shuttle to Pont d'Espana, cuts off 800m of elevation!" sez Chris. "Duh" is my response. So we strolled down to the gare for that little shuttle, which is really a big coach bus, and started our day a bit easier.
The Pont d'Espana is by far the most US National Park looking place, a big visitor center with a even bigger parking lot in front of it. We paused and used the toilets and looked at a few of the outdoor exhibits, then headed up the wide well groomed track with a hundred others. It was pines and granite as well, looking very Sierra-like to me, smelling like the Sierras as well, except the smell wasn't quite right: there was a heavy stinky undertone, the constant battle between Ariel and Persil, or whatever the local variations of those industrial petrochemicals are.
After passing the little hotel at the lake, as did the trees, and the valley opened up--but the crowds only slightly thinned, and there was an annoying helicopter flying by every ten minutes with boxes of building materials or something. Wilderness it was not.
A bit higher and higher, and a little crest, and we were at the first refuge, the Refuge des Oulettes de Gaube, and we picked out a spot to rest and have lunch that was a few hundred meters away--the helicopter was dropping all the supplies off there (looked like it was getting a new roof?) and blasting the refuge with downwash every ten minutes.
And then we saw the first ones of the trip--fat little marmots, baby pups, and their chunky
adults, scampering away from us yet still keeping an eye from a perch on a more distant rock.
One of them shrieked a few times. Awww, cute.
It's the view that was stupendous though, and unexpected. We had come to the end of the valley, a broad cirque with glaciers way up high, and the tall steep cone of Vignemale, the highest point in the Pyrenees at some 3298m. Another one of those scenes that looks CGI generated, just very vertical and wide angle, so better see this on IMAX if it were cinema.
Not too hot, and we both were feeling great and unrushed. There was still a lot of climbing to do to the refuge, the highest sited refuge in the Pyrenees.
So, sigh, another 700m of uphill, slow and steady, but we're both feeling quite a bit fitter so we weren't out of breath, even with the altitude.
Then into the refuge, which we will know as
the stripper pole refuge: we were assigned two beds on the top bunk, but rather than a ladder,
there wes a single fat pole with stubby staggered footholds to clamber up. Ugh, but whatever.
Just don't drink too much before bed so you don't fall off the pole at midnight as you get up to
go to the WC. Noted.
