Our campsite halfway up a ski slope ended out working pretty well for us. Unfortunately for Simon, his food bag was burgled in the night by a fox. It stole his loaf of bread and got into his oats. I didn’t really know what I was protecting my food from by sleeping with it inside the tent inside a Nylofume pack liner, but I guess now I do. I always assume there are at least mice everywhere.
We left around 7am, a little before Simon. We climbed up beyond the bounds of the ski resort to our first lake of the day. It was a bit marshy looking with grasses growing in it so I opted not to swim. The sun was in our face for most of the morning so I didn’t end up taking too many photos. The better views were often in front of us, but if I tried to capture them they’d be completely washed out.
Beyond the first lake, we reached a col (pass) on the French Spanish border where we got (backlit) views of impressive peaks like Pic du Midi d’Ossau. The col seemed to be the dividing line for pasture land and we could hear the bells of the animals ringing with their usual morning vigor. Chomp chomp chomp, poop poop poop, all day long.
We saw a sign that indicated swimming wasn’t allowed in the lakes of the Pyrenees National Park, which we had just entered. Respectfully, fuck that. As we descended from the col, we began to notice just how many people were present. There was never a point at which we couldn’t see people both behind us and in front of us. The views were pretty spectacular, for the third day in a row. Or is it four now? Whatever, I get why the people were here.
Since buying new food yesterday, I got to try some items for the first time. This particular brand of pan au chocolates were not a winner. They were too dry. But I’m committed to eating 4/day for the next 5 days! The meat sticks I purchased were an absolute winner. I will definitely buy more of those next time. I only bought two packs of 5 and I ate my first pack today. The next 5 days won’t be so delicious.
We took a break in the shade next to a stream. Not only has the scenery gotten much better so too has the water availability and by extension, the temperature. Even on hot stretches, there are often places to drench yourself with water for cooling, making the entire hiking experience of this section so much more enjoyable than the first week.
We had another big climb after our break, but on the way up we came to a much nicer alpine lake. Conveniently forgetting the sign from earlier, I jumped in. It was so nice to sit in the grass drying off. I could do that all day, every day. Well I’m sure I’d eventually get bored but it sure doesn’t get old on our hikes. We finished hiking up to our pass, partly on a talus field that had a small, lingering snow patch next to it. It was really crowded at the top. People were constantly arriving and departing. We sat a bit below the pass on a big flat rock and had lunch.
After lunch we descended past another great lake that I just couldn’t pass up. Even though we were 15 minutes in from our lunch break, we took another hour next to this lake where I swam twice. Since there were several groups spread around the lake and no one else was swimming, I was very quick with both of my swims, you know, respectfully breaking the rule that shouldn’t exist.
After we left, we descended down the other side of the pass. We passed a Rifugio, where there were tons of people and another lake. We immediately continued on and the crowds disappeared completely. We were alone with the animals again. We passed a few groups going up as we were coming down but nothing like the rest of the day.
Our plan was to sleep near a road at the bottom of our descent, but when we could hear the road noise from almost a mile away, we decided to pivot. We found a potential campsite, but it was right next to the trail/dirt road. Seeing as it was only 15:30, we figured we better wait a while before pitching our tent. We climbed down from the trail and sat next to the river, where I submerged myself yet again and wrote this very post. We haven’t seen Simon all day and if we see him, we’ll flag him down and hopefully camp with him again.