We awoke on the ledge that we had bivuoaced on the night before. Luckily we were still here and hadn’t fallen or been blown off the cliff and into lac Portillon, hah!
The traverse to the refuge just down below took well over an hour. While it should have only been a 10 minute hike on good trail, there were some massive, steep snowfields blocking the way. They were too icy to safely traverse first thing in the morning. I could barely kick steps into them with my awesome boots, and as soon as I looked down, I knew we had to find a different way. Maybe if we had crampons and ice axe, it would be different. But we don’t, so we had to hike alllll the way up and over it.
It’s been amazing and overwhelming how much snow there is in this area of the high Pyrénées! We were not expecting that at all this late into Summertime. We had to hike up about 300m of steep scree slopes to make it up and around the big snow field before we could finally descend on a steep, cairned trail to the refuge.
Ah, what a place to stay! Just by a massive, beautiful glacial lake, with a view down the valley, a superbly architectured warm building to stay in, and someone to cook all your meals for you. All this cost us about €45 / $60.
I wander around most of the day taking photos and reading what I could in the all-French library. At least photos transcend the language barrier. I read a book about all of the glaciers that there once were in the Pyrénées. I must have seen at least half of them by now. The peaks that I gaped and galloped over, of the Midi d’Ossau, le Balaitous, Vignemale, Monte-Perdu, the Cirque Gavarnie, Cirque Estaubes, the Barroude wall, the glaciers of the Gourges-Blanc, the Aygue-Tortes, and now, the Portillon Glacier, as well as those of the Aneto and Maladeta that we will reach in the next day of hiking. How lucky are we to get to experience so many glacial valleys in one relatively short hike?! It’s like the European version of Glacier National Park in America.
I have seen many of them without realizing that they were once glaciers. Now there is only a semblance of their former selves, an ever-receding sheet of ice and a shadow of scientific ignorance about the impact that we humans are having on our planet.
Now, in their stead, there is only a glorious, rocky monument to what once was, before our fossil-fuel powered civilization destroyed the little perma-ice in existence, used up as coolant to counterbalance and buffer the heat produced by the great human machine. We drove our cars and drove every other living thing to extinction.
One day, all of these glorious monuments will be reduced to snow- covered scree fields, the likes of which we have spent the last 21 days traversing.
I suppose we won’t miss them until they’re gone. Like the glaciers, the coral reefs, all the species annihilated by commercial logging and fishing and agriculture, all those wonderful forms of life, gone, not to be seen again on a billion, billion other worlds.
Who knows what they could have taught us, what benefit we could have garnered, had we only respected their life. Instead, we traded all the truly beautiful things for an ocean full of plastic, food that cannot be eaten from fields that can no longer grow, water that cannot be drinken, land that cannot be walked on, air that can hardly be breathed without succumbing to some neurological disorder or another from the toxins pumped out from the power station down the way.
Oh yeah, the refuge! It’s awesome! The dinner was a delicious buttery legume soup with fresh bread, then pasta with an amazing meat sauce, and then a super whipped puddin’ cream dessert. Wow! They sure know how to please their hikers and climbers out here.
This hut is owned by the French Alpine Club, so the only people that come up here are badasses who are into climbing seriously badass mountains. We all get along, even if I don’t understand any of what anyone says haha! I’m amazed at how many people here speak English just as fluently as French though. Really putting the pressure on me to batton down and learn a second language.
I’ve walked the barrage (dam) next to the refuge three times. The views of the lake, silhouetted by mountains, and of the valley below are the stuff dreams are made of. Tomorrow, I will walk across the barrage for the fourth and last time, and I will be alone in the montane wilderness for the last two of the hardest days of the HRP.
I am the one who wanted to thru-hike the high route of the Pyrénées, one of the most strenuous long distance hikes available to adventure-seekers. I must face the greatest challenges that it can serve on my own.
Good night!