We both overslept today! The haute pyrénées really wear you out when you’re spending 11-12 hours every day hiking up and down super steep traverses. I find myself averaging about 11 hours of sleep time, so going to bed at 10pm naturally means I’ll wake up at 9am. That’s the mininum amount of time my body needs to regenerate itself, apparently, although I think I could sleep for 36 hours if I had nothing better to do!
Anyways, the mountains were calling and we hiked out towards them. We had a long, beautiful hike on the GR11 trail, through pine forests (that fresh pine smell, mm!) and grassy meadows. We eventually came down to a big valley with a river flowing through it, where we saw fit to take lunch and do a little bit of washing.
We walked another little ways and came to the Forcallo Campground, where I ordered a cafe and then asked if we could use one of their outlets to charge all our stuff. They said yes! That was just what we needed to feel comfortable going into the next four challenging days of mountain walking. We would be useless if our technology died halfway through. There goes all of our navigation, maps, photography, stories, music, comms, you get the point hahah.
It was super nice of them to allow us to top off the batteries at their place. In return we ordered a bunch of delicious food, beer, and soft drinks from the bar. Mmm, coffee, coke, beer, huevos, chorizo, and fritas! Deliciousness. Everything a hiker needs to get up and over the next mountain!
Around 3, we hiked out on the GR11 trail for a ways up a river valley. The scenery was sweeping and gorgeous, with views of many different mountain ranges on the way up.
Then we branched off from the GR11 on an unmarked traverse, officially jumping onto the high route and into one of the hardest parts of the trail! We climbed up to a big bowl shaped valley, and then climbed up a river gorge to its source, a glacial bowl full of snow, high in the mountains at 2,600 metres. It was quite steep and there were only a few cairns to guide us. Not many people come up this way, obviously.
Then we had a steep traverse down the French side of the mountain pass, to the vallon de Aygues-Tortes. Wonderful scenery abounded, blocked momentarily by fog on the way down.
We set up camp at the first flat grassy area we could find, as it was approaching darkfall around 8:30pm.
We made some delicious food, soaked up the views, and went to bed. Good night!