We slept in today. It was gloriously quiet this morning, despite the campground being quite crowded. Who knew that sleeping away from animals with cowbells would be so peaceful?
We weren’t even sure we were going to leave today. We were so tired yesterday, but sleeping in really helped us both. Clemens was staying another day so there was yet another reason to stay. Ultimately we decided we felt good enough to at least try for a half day.
We left at 10 and walked for a while on the road. Thankfully the town of Lescun is so small there was almost no traffic. Eventually the paved road gave way to a gravel road, a parking lot, and finally a dirt road. The dirt road followed a river. I made heavy use of the river, dunking my shirt at every opportunity and drinking with abandon. We had lunch by our last river crossing on the side of the dirt road.
After lunch, we climbed much more steeply, but soon enough we were back amongst the sweeping limestone cliffs. It was warm, but with the breeze, very tolerable. It was beautiful and made me glad to be out here hiking. I think with the exception of swimming in the Atlantic at the start, skipping everything until yesterday would have been fine. Since it would be difficult to start outside of Lescun, I would recommend anyone considering the HRP to consider skipping the section west of Lescun. After Lescun, it’s world-class scenery. Before, not so much.
As we ascended, the views only got better. We had sweeping views of mountains covered in rocks and grass in all directions. There were occasional clusters of livestock, so the ringing bells were back. We traversed a ridge on a great trail so we made good time and saw quite a bit. The water availability was low, so as soon as I saw flowing water near some horses, I refilled.
The views continued to be fantastic. We had blown past our half day stopping point, before we reached the ridge. Our next stopping point for the day would be our first lake of the HRP. It was a bit more than I wanted to walk, but it was either 3 hours or 5.5 hours of walking. We had one last, unexpected and fairly extended climb before we finally reached the lake. It was nice, but didn’t allow swimming. We bought some drinks at the Refugio above the lake and waited for a more appropriate time to pitch our tent. Weirdly, camping isn’t allowed here, but tolerated between the hours of 19:00-9:00. Simon arrived as we were drinking our beverages, but he decided to camp a bit further on. At one point, before 19:00, someone decided to pitch their tent, which instigated a mad dash of campers scurrying to pitch their tents. It was also sprinkling at this point, so we had the excuse that we didn’t want to get wet.
Tomorrow, we’ll go to Candanchu and buy food for 5 more days. We may have to take a bus from there, down to an adjacent town with a larger supermarket. Either way though, we should have a great day in front of us. The high Pyrenees have arrived and after a week in the lower mountains, they could not be more welcome.