The book "Pirineos - guia de los 3000m" divides the Pyrenees into eleven zones where 3000ers can be found. One of the smaller of these is the La Munia area. One way to get there from the Spanish side is via the pintoresque Barrosa Valley.
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In 2018, when Xavi and I had been there for the first time, our idea was to climb La Munia and maybe Pic Robiñera but the meteorogical conditions didn't make things easy for us that day.
We'd just passed by the Barrosa hut (1750m) under an overcast sky, when something extraordinary happened: we were literally dumbstruck by lightening. I don't think that we were in any danger, because there must have been a good 2 seconds between bolt and thunder, yet the feeling was very strange. While we were heading upwards the slope behind the hut, I was looking at the ground when suddenly I was blinded by an astonishingly bright light. I didn't understand immediately what it was and first thought that something was wrong with my eyes. While I still was analysing the situation the thunder reached us.
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| 2018 attempt of La Munia |
It wasn't until then that I realised that it had been lightening even though I still don't understand how I could get so bedazzled while facing the ground. When talking about it to Xavi, it turned out that he had had a similar experience, only that he had perceived a reddish flash of light.
We continued our walk, but rainfall soon forced us to scrap the idea of bivvying further up the mountain. Instead, we decided to spend the night in the hut, which actually ended up being very nice, because we shared it with a couple from St Cugat (I believe) and a guy from England (if I remember it well) who was doing the GR11.
Weather conditions the next day were only slightly better, but we went lighter because we had left most of our stuff behind in the hut. For hours we made our way up in light showers and tried to find a route through an, at times, dense fog. Finally, at about 2600m, heavy rain made us call it a day. Still, what we had seen of the valley and the approach to the Robiñera saddle had left us with a good impression. Apart from the 3 people in the hut we hadn't seen a soul, the landscape had been stunning and the environment savage. It was clear that we would come back to try our luck at a later point in time.
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| Dried pond at about 2000m |
That turned out to be the summer of 2019. This time, our idea was to follow the path of the previous year up to the Robiñera Saddle (2809m), where we would bivvy before climbing the ridge from the Munia Saddle to Pic Heïd, that would see us summitting five 3000ers, namely La Munia, la Pequeña Munia, Sierra Morena, Troumouse and Pic Heïd. Once reached the latter, we would turn back to Pic Troumouse. From there, a path would lead us down eastwards to Puerto de Barrosa, and then southwards where at maybe 2000m we would finally get back on the way that had brought us up the day before.
As always, we left on a Friday, had lunch somewhere on tour and started walking during the early afternoon hours. The weather was really good this time and we gained height without problems, remembering and recognising many of the landscape's features from the previous summer. At the hut we greeted a young family and a while later, more or less at the tree line, we reached the point where we had had our enlightment the year before. After some ruins, just short of a dried pond we left the well traced path to Puerto de Barrosa. From here, we had to lose some height in order to cross a torrent before gaining altitude in earnest.
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| ...and scarcer |
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| Vegetation getting scarcer... |
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| Xavi at the bivouac |
Next morning, we got to the saddle in no time and could easily make out our next landmark; the Munia saddle (2853m), which turned out being a little further away than we had expected. The landscape here was absolutely amazing and apparently barren of all life. Only sharp-edged rocks and snowy leftovers from the last winter were to be seen.
Just before we reached the saddle, we saw 2 people crossing it from the French side. As a matter of fact, all ten or so people we would meet on the ridge that day came from over there. When we reached the saddle, the two were already well up the ridge. Actually, it's not necessary to get to the saddle because a shortcut exists that directly aims at a key point of the ridge: El Pas du Chat. For some reason, however, we didn't find the short cut and didn't want to risk wasting precious time looking for it in that rather difficult terrain.
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| Moon rise from our bivouac |
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| Near la Munia Col - Robiñera and Munia lakes in the background |
Xavi and I soon were on our way up the ridge, mostly scrambling now. The view we had of the Circ de Troumouse on the French side was stunning: the lower part of the valley was under a thick cover of clouds that at times looked like a lake full of milk. After a while, and without any problems we reached the Pas du Chat which had worried me a little because what I had heard of it had sounded rather intimidating. However, it turned out to be nothing extraordinary at all, not more difficult to manage than other parts of the way, but I guess that it's a point one MUST find because if you don't, you might well have to tackle obstacles far worse.
At times, our route up was quite exposed to deep drops now, but most of the time the rock offered us good hold and our progress was steady.
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| Climbing la Munia, clouds beneath |
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| Near Pas du Chat |
We reached 3133m high la Munia without incidences and soon after that summited la Munia Pequeña (3096m). From here, we had a very good view of Pic Sierra Morena (3090), which lay on the far side of a wide saddle. It was a very smooth and easy walk.
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| Summit picture (probably on la Munia) |
Sierra Morena is an interesting peak because while from one side of the ridge, it has a ramp-like shape, from the other side it's a nearly vertical wall, 40m high. When we reached its top, the two climbers from before had just abseiled the wall. They most politely offered us to use their rope which, conveniently, saved us some time. While preparing for the roping section, a guy whom I had just seen 40m below, suddenly stood next to us. He had climbed that wall without any safety measures and was out alone - quite sure of his capabilities. Although he was French, his Spanish was more than decent. Together we analysed the part of the ridge that still lay in front of us and made out our next targets before he left into the opposite direction.
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| Tetraeder on Troumouse summit |
Shortly after we had roped down, we stood on the Troumouse summit, which has an easily recognisable tetraether structure on its 3085m high top. Surprisingly for us, this peak seems to be more important than La Munia, which stands around 50m higher, but it's at Troumouse were three ridges meet.
From here on, the path became more complex but not so much that we found it necessary to rope up. We soon saw that we could proceed more easily when we left the ridge and made our way forward some 30m down to the West. After about 40 minutes of a bit of trial-and-error-scrambling we had reached our final summit of that day: 3022m high Pic Heïd. Next, we headed back to Pic Troumouse, from where our plan saw us descending eastwards towards the Barrosa col.
That way confronted us with difficulties from the very start and neither Xavi nor I was in the mood of taking pictures anymore. The description in our book provided us with only a vague idea of how to make our way down safely. It said more or less that we only had to stick to the most obvious path. The hassle was, there was none. To be fair, I should mention that what we followed was a description of the way up to Pic Troumouse and pathfinding upwards is usually easier than downwards.
Anyways, only after having tried several dead ends did we find a couple of cairns that at least indicated that we might be correct after all. Rock quality was awful, the terrain was steep and exposed and most of the time we felt lost. At some point, we had a look at the spot we were aiming for, and what I saw didn't encourage me much. It seemed that we were rather in a wall than on a path down a mountain and I couldn't imagine how to lose so much height in so little distance.
During a short and very exposed traverse, a block I was holding to suddenly came loose and I thought that together we would go down. The rock dropped some centimetres onto my horizontally positioned right thigh, where it decided to take a rest. With that additional weight on my leg I couldn't lift or move it anymore and instead tried to make the deadweight topple over and down the mountain face with my right hand while struggling to not lose grip of a precarious hold with my left one. I vividly remember how I made good use of that key moment to eloquently exclaim: "Shit, No!" (in German). After the rock had let off of me, I continued the last meters of the traverse and, as soon as I could, sat down and allowed myself some minutes to shake violently.
Still, the difficulties continued. Even though we found a way to get a little further down, it was only too soon that, again, we felt trapped somewhere exposed and didn't see how to go on. This is where I sort of lost faith and decided that we needed help. Luckily, neither my nor Xavi's phone could establish any connection to the emergency services, so it came that I decided to inspect what looked like a remote possibility to progress. A narrow ledge allowed me to peek around a corner, and what I saw really lifted my spirits: a belay station to abseil and a cairn some 10 to 15 meters below! Would we finally be able to get out of this all by ourselves?
We abseiled. To any readers who have been there: This was next to a cave-like crevice, and I also remember some metal poles placed under an overhang.
I felt so relieved that I even took a photo of Xavi roping down.
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| To the left: My photo, to the right: a photo from the internet that shows the fixed rope (even though it's not visible in the photo that I took from my Kindle's screen) |
It's not a great pic but later on, at home, it helped me to figure out something interesting:
In someone's description of a climb of Pic Troumouse, I found a photo (no. 16 of 34) of the very same spot, and the person describes how there was a fixed rope that could have helped overcome the most difficult sections of the wall. That route description also mentions painted arrows and numerous cairns apart from occasional fixed ropes; none of which we had the pleasure to come across. My explanation is that an avalanche or similar must have cleansed the mountain of those elements.
Having overcome this obstacle, we were able to lose height more easily, taking care not to get too far to our right, where we knew we would encounter a very deep, vertical drop. Although we didn't manage to get as far to the left as we would have liked, we finally got to a point from where we could make it out of the wall by abseiling the final meters from some rotten rocks.
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| A picture from the previous day of Troumouse (centre) and the Barrosa col (right) |
We celebrated this feat more enthusiastically than any of the summits we had climbed that day. From there on, it was just walking downwards back to the car for maybe 4 hours, a walk on which Xavi literally fell asleep while walking. In hindsight, we should have spent the night at the hut we would pass by after an hour and a half, but we were keen to make it back home as our initial plan had foreseen. We got to the car around midnight and started the journey back, only to stop some hours into the drive to get some sleep, because none of us was in conditions to drive safely due to the accumulated fatigue.
One of many conclusions of that day is, that I believe that this "route (no.112)" up Pic Troumouse should not be included in the book of normal routes, or that at least there should be a note discouraging climbers not familiar with it from trying it as a way down.
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