Punta Alta de Comalesbienes - 3014m

 

Aigües Tortes i l'Estany de Sant Maurici is the name of a Catalan national park located in the Pyrinees. I have to admit that most of my summit attempts in that area have been in vain and that, as for until shortly, I'd only been able to set foot on two minor summits of the Besiberri ridge that according to most lists don't even count as 3000 m summits.

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 My last mountain trip in January which was aimed at Punta Passet, also had to be cut short. Xavi and I were already near the summit when we felt it was time to retreat. Treacherous snow conditions had made us lose too much time of an already short winter day.

This time, on June 8th, we wanted to climb Punta Alta in what was my third try at it and the second together with Xavi, who had already summited that peak many years before. However, since Xavi's memory of it had already begun to fade, he happily agreed on a refresher. We met shortly before dawn, around 5 o'clock, and set off towards Pont de Suert where we stopped for a brief breakfast. When entering the national park, we had a short talk with the warden, who wanted to know what we were up to. He was particularly interested in our knowledge of the area, the route we wanted to take and the equipment we had brought with us. To my surprise, he ended up telling us that, if he were in our position, he wouldn't take an ice axe but only the trekking poles in order to save weight. We did as he said and would later agree that he had been right.     

It was 9 o'clock when we started our hike from the parking lot at the Cavallers dam at 1785 m height. A well-marked path led us in about one hour to the mountain hut Estany Negre (2220 m). We had a second breakfast at Estany Gran de Colieto before we separated from the main path by turning right. 

Estany de Roca

From there on the terrain gained steepness. Our next waypoint was l'Estany de Roca, located at 2397 m. While we were taking some photos there, we were able to see a lonely hiker heading upwards on the far side of the lake. His direction was different from the one that we had in mind, but we supposed that he, too, wanted to climb Punta Alta. 

At Estany de Roca, grass and rocks finally gave way to snow, and that's exactly why we opted for strapping on our crampons as soon as it had been decided that enough photos had been taken for the time being.

Again, the terrain gained in steepness. After circling a spire to the right, we met the hiker we had seen from the lake. He told us that, indeed, he was on his way to Punta Alta but had taken a wrong turn a while before. From then on we stayed more or less together for the rest of our way up.

Our round trip on a map of the area

We reached the summit ridge a little further away from Punta Alta than we had planned but that wasn't an issue once we knew where exactly we were. 

Site inspection

Conditions on the ridge were better than on any slope that had led us there, and so we proceeded towards our summit where we arrived about half an hour later.

Xavi and I on Punta Alta

For our way down we chose a path different from the one we had gone up. After heading down in a South-East direction we turned westwards to the Barranc de Comalesbienes, a steep ravine that would lead us straight down to the dam where we had begun our walk in the morning. Due to our previous short night and the relative long march we showed clear signs of tiredness when we finally reached the car. This round trip in winter conditions had been more demanding that we had expected.