The Tough Hike

I want to share some pictures from the toughest day of hiking in the Pyrenees. Out of the five days of hiking this one was by far the hardest for me. It was also the most fun. I don’t remember the name of the place, but the ridge you see in the back of all the pictures is part of the border between France and Spain.


This is the view from where we got out of the mini-bus to start our walk. You can see the beautiful waterfall in the distance. What you don’t realize right away is that those tiny little dots you can just barely see on the trail are people! I kept taking pictures as we got closer and the waterfall just kept getting bigger and bigger, the distance was very deceiving.


This picture gives you a little bit of an idea as far as scale, if you compare the people in the foreground with the tiny dots on the trail near the waterfall. This is also a good view of the seasonal waterfall locations: see the black streaks on the rock off to the right of the main falls, during spring thaw each one of those marks is the location of a waterfall.


There’s Josie, with a hiking pole in each hand working her way up the trail. I took this picture from the top of a boulder that was probably about 9 feet high, 20 feet long, and 15 feet wide. I love this kind of terrain; boulder strewn fields are some of my favorite places to play around. I love scaling the boulders and jumping from rock to rock. When I was growing up Mom always told me I acted like I was part mountain goat, I guess with that and her assertions that I was part monkey I’m wondering what that says about my Mother….LOL I know I will pay for that one.


As you get closer to the waterfall the trail gets harder. The path seems to get steeper with every step. Again in this picture you have a couple people in the foreground and if you look hard you can see tiny people on the trail. At least at this point they actually looked like people and not just little dots.


The closer I got to the waterfall, the more I started feeling like I was in one of those endless hallways, where you can walk and walk but you don’t seem to get anywhere. The sheer size of the waterfall was really amazing.


This picture really does not do the waterfall justice since there is no sense of scale, but it was just such a beautiful sight.


Here is a picture of me in front of the waterfall. See that look on my face, if that looks like pain it’s because IT IS!!! The last part of the climb was incredibly steep, only our guide, Rob and I went all the way to the waterfall. It hurt to do it, but I could not hike all that way and then not go to the waterfall.


This is not the best picture, but it does give an idea of how steep the final part of the trail is. You can also see that the trail disappears on this final climb. Instead you just have one huge scree pile, so your footing is always fairly tenuous. If you look really hard in this picture you will see a small white dot down where the trail turns, that is Josie.


I zoomed in as much as my little camera would and if you look in the middle of the picture on the right hand side you can see Josie standing there in a white t-shirt. Also if you look at the way people are going back down toward the trail it shows you how hard this terrain was. Instead of gingerly walking down picking each step and still sliding I decided to go down differently. I RAN! I just zigzagged down the hill angling toward large rocks that I knew I could used to stop myself if I had to. I think the other people thought I was nuts, and I know Josie did not appreciate it, but I knew what I was doing. Nobody ever believes me when I tell them that, I have no idea why!

This was not the prettiest hike we went on, but it was definitely the most fun for me, I really enjoyed it!