Haute Route Pyrenees - HRP

First I would like to introduce myself. My name is Zvonimr, 27 years old Croatian from the capital Zagreb. I work in Research and Development part like a traffic engineer in Barcelona. My hobbies are climbing, cycling and hiking around the world and I would like to show you that. 

 

Pyrenees are the mountain range 500 km long that form the natural border between Spain and France. It separates the Iberian Peninsula from the rest of the Europe. The highest peak Pico d' Aneto (3404 meters) is located in Central Pyrenees. There are 129 peaks higher than 3000 meters. 

 That summer we decided to walk High Alpine Route Pyrenees. The 800 kilometer traverse through whole Pyrenees from the Bay of Biscay to the Mediterranean Sea with 42 km elevation change! The specialty of this trekking is because it's completely unsigned. Beneath this trekking exists two other traverses of Pyrenees. GR11 is the traverse that is passing through Spanish part of Pyrenees and GR10 is passing through French side, the routes that are completely signed.    

The route starts in the small touristic village Hendaya at the French Spanish border at Bay of Biscay. Hendaya is the small beautiful French town with nice sand beach. We expected nice sunny weather but it was just opposite, whole day raining, cloudy, cold and misty. Nice and couriering beginning! After really hard first day, totally wet, we slept in a tent near the small village Etxalar in Spain. The interesting thing about HRP is that you don't know mostly in which country you are, always crossing somewhere the border, walking in unknown and not signed paths.  

Keep walking!

Magical forrest

 Important to say is that we were following the book “The Pyrenean Haute Route”, book published by Cicerone Press. The guidebook includes practical information on villages, mountain huts, guesthouses, hotels and campsites, with variant routes and the optional ascents of ten classic summits but I suggest wearing some bigger maps of the zones and also a GPS.  

 First weeks we were passing through Basque speaking part of Spain and French. The Basques are the ethnic group that lives in the north east part of Spain and also at north part of Pyrenees. Their language is Basque (Basque: Euskara) and it’s still not define what is the origin of the ethnic group and the language. 

Green Basque country

Romantic tent - this night started to rain heavily and all the water entered to our tent, hard night

 The next days was raining also almost every day. We were also mostly of the days walking in the mist so I had to follow GPS almost all the time. After few days of walking the route is crossing with Camino de Santiago at the small village Roncesvalles. That village is the famous because it's the part of famous world pilgrimage Camino de Santiago, the way that I made the year before HRP. In Roncesvalles it exist huge albergue (some sort of Camino's hostel) with 400 beds. As my girlfriend and I walked Camino we were really happy to see one familiar place after hard and wet days. On the way to Roncesvalles I said to my girlfriend: “Imagine that we see Norbert” (one friend from Ireland that we met at Camino the year before). After coming to the village we went to eat something and imagine, we saw the Norbert there. I just can't explain how that was possible and it was one of the most emotional moments for us. Norbert realized that my girlfriend is suffering during the HRP and that is really hard for her because she was wearing 12 kg of equipment and she was really in shape during that time but bad weather and hard walking is taking the profit of her. The Norbert propose us to make Camino de Santiago again but I didn't want to. It was just really big wish to make the HRP and I knew that is still waiting for us almost 45 days more of really amazing trek.  

Camino sign

 Next days after Roncesvalles the weather was almost like before, raining, misty and a bit of sun, just not enough to get dry and we were entering to high mountains more than 2500 meters and I was worried about the forecast. After few more days of walking and when I saw forecast in the weather higher mountains will be the same for next weeks we decided to stop the HRP and go to GR11, the Spanish traverse of Pyrenees where we hoped that the weather will be better. I was really sorry that we stopped with this project but it was better for two of us. It didn't make sense to be wet whole way, be in the mist and the higher mountains are much dangerous in the bad weather.  

Part of Spanish Pyrenees

 So the first part of our trip finished in the Spanish village Ochagavia where the GR11 is passing. The weather was much better in the Spanish part of Pyrenees and we could finally enjoy some sunny days. For my point of way that way was much easier and relaxed, but for my girlfriend still it was really hard she was going more and more nervous. The day that we also decide to stop GR11 was taking one shortcut of few hours that was really bad idea, this shortcut was 3 hours of almost vertical rock climbing at south face. For someone who doesn't know what means south face during the summer. It means whole day sun without shade and water. Just rock everywhere. Finally after three hours we came to the peak of 2300 meters and after that we still had to walk four hours down to the camping Zuriza near the National Parc Valles Occidentales. That day my girlfriend decided to stop this trekking. For me that was really hard moment. Something likes losing the dream. I was thinking to continue walking alone, that would mean that I will break up with my girlfriend, so for me was not worth it to broke up such a nice relationship. Happiness

Next day we decided to go to National Parc Ordesa and Monte Perdido, which is known for one of the most beautiful national parks in Spain with his famous canyon and peak Monte Perdido – The lost mountain (3355 m). We stayed like one week hiking around in this beautiful and amazing place.  

Torla is the small Spanish touristic village at the entrance of the National Park Ordesa and Monte Perdido

Snow in the middle of the August

Beautiful mountain hut

Brecha de Rolando - the door between France and Spain

Other side

Mountains, mountains ...

 After 3 weeks walking in Pyrennes we decided to start again Camino de Santiago which I will explain in next stories. 

 Until then you can see in Vimeo the video I made during the Pyrenees experience.