Astazu Summits

Pequeño Astazu (3015m)

For our tour in august 2020, Xavi and I had planned to pay a visit to the Ordesa area, but starting the trip in the Pineta valley, which apart from one of my very first mountain tours together with Kiku and him was unknown to both of us. That tour, back in 2003 or so, had taken us to Balcón de la Pineta one winter's evening. There, we bivvied in a snowstorm and the next morning woke up in a complete white-out. It didn't take us long to decide going down and back home as quickly as possible. The whole area, hence, remained unseen to my eyes and Xavi's.

This time, the plan was to go up to Balcón de la Pineta in daylight, and during the days to follow to summit some 3000ers there. To start with, both Astazu summits were on our list, as were Pico del Marboré, Pico Oriental de la Cascada, Cilindró and Pitón SW del Marboré as well as El Dedo del Monte Perdido, the latter being probably beyond our level. We didn't have a concrete plan but rather were on an as-much-as-possible approach. The weak points in our not-plan were the traverse from the Astazú summits to Pico de Marboré and especially the way back that would potentially include the crossing of the Glaciar de Monte Perdido. As to the weather forecast: it looked grim, but we had to try at least. This time, we decided to leave our bivvy bags in the car and each of us carried half of a tent instead.

The car was left on a to-pay-for lot in the Pineta Valley in the early afternoon hours and we soon started walking towards Balcón de Pineta surrounded by numerous hikers. Some of the ones heading downwards wore masks - the relatively nearby town of Benasque was one of the hottest Corona hotspots after all - and all did we try to leave as much breathing space as the path allowed. After a while, most hikers diverged to some spectacular waterfalls and nature somehow started to feel less contagious. We made it to the Balcón in good weather and time and had a great view over the valley. The whole Ordesa area, including the adjoining valleys, is absolutey spectacular. During the years I have seen plenty of outstanding mountains and beautiful valleys in the Pyrenees, but Ordesa and the surrounding aren't like anything I've seen in other parts. They are alays a bit more stunning and breathtaking than the rest. When we reached around 2500m, we noticed that the cloud cover began not far above us. Monte Perdido, for example, couldn't be seen - it's North-Eastern glacier soon swallowed by fog.

Tucarroya Gap with the Pyrenees' oldest mountain hut

The high valley we were in, however, offered slightly better conditions and at times we could even make out the Astazu summits we were aiming for. We were good on time and were keen on trying to make it as far up as possible. At the Marboré lake, we refilled our bottles and had a look at the amazing Tucarroya gap, where the Pyrenees' very first mountain hut was built. I would have liked to have a closer look at it, but our plans were ambitious and we didn't want to jeopardise them by doing sightseeing.

Looking back down the valley, Monte Perdidio's glacier now entirely visible

 On our way up to 3000m, we only crossed paths with two people that were going down after having summited the higher of the Astazu summits. In the vicinity of the Swan Col, we found a nice spot for our tent halves. 

Tent pitched near Corredor Swan - Col Astazu and Pequeño Astazu in the background

Since it looked as if it were about to start raining, we decided to pitch the tent immediately and to make our summit attempt afterwards. Since only about 100m seperated us from the summit vertically we felt that we could still do it afterwards. 

Xavi on the higher of the Astazu summits (3071m). Llac Marboré in the background

And so we could: Less than 30 minutes later, we accomplished more than we had thought possibly feasable during the better part of the day. Not only did we have a good view of the valley we had come up through, but also a spectacular sight of our summits' shorter buddy, the Pequeño Astazu with it's North-Eastern flank steeply falling towards Gavarnie.

Pequeño Astazu

Our summit celebration was cut short, however, because the light drizzle we had got used to by then soon started to turn into a heavy one. If they had paid attention, the raindrops would have seen us hurriyng down to our tent as fast as we could. Even though we couldn't outrun most of them, we still made it back reasonably dry.

The moment we were inside the tent, it started to rain in earnest and it continued doing so for about 12 hours. But rain wasn't what worried me the most: apart from the falling water, we had the feeling a hurricane was raging outside, so we decided to store our boots inside the tent too, in fear that the gale might blow them away. In fact, the wind hit our tent so hard and flatted it so much that its ceiling touched my belly at least twice while I was trying to sleep that night. And since bad weather often comes with thunderstorms and lightning, and our pretty exposed spot might have attracted the latter, we kept our ears open for as long as we could even though we actually were not too keen to look for a safer spot if not strictly necessary. Well, actually, I felt left quite alone keeping my ears open while filtering out Xavi's periodic snores... Luckily, Thor, the god of thunder, was in a better mood than his colleague Njord, the deity responsible for wind.

Coll Astazu, the "way" to Pic Marboré somewhere behind or on the foggy mountain

Next morning, we got up a bit later than usual, because it still continued to rain. The wind, however, had died down. When we finally opened the zipper of our tent, a dense fog prevented us from seeing any further than some meters. The situation improved a bit while we were having breakfast and got dressed, so we decided to have a look for the lower of the two Astazu summits. We knew there were two possibilities up: A direct ascent from the Corredor Swan, or an easier one from the far side. We decided to take the easy appproach of fear of committing mistakes in the fog.

Pequeno Astazu (3015m)

Even though it took us a bit longer than expected to reach the summit, we made it there without problems. The view was not exactly generous as can be seen in this picture. 
By then, however, our plans regarding the remaining summits had fallen apart. Since we saw no point in waiting for the weather to improve, we decided to go back down. When passing under Monte Perdido's glacier, we would consider if a crossing in upward direction looked feasable but truth is that we hadn't much hope in it. Even so, another thing we could still do, and which looked more achievable, was to pay a visit to the Tucarroya hut. But first we had to get back to our tent. For this we wanted to try the direct route which turned out much faster, more fun and easier to find. 
The way down to Llac Marboré was still very foggy. A herd of goats accompanied us for a while, but any photos we could take of them are of rather low quality.

Goats

A little above the lake we came out of the clouds. Since an attempt of the glacier was out of question, we wanted to try visit the hut. We awkwardly made it down to the lake, something that took us much longer than we had thought. A thin green line that we could see crossing the rock face about 30m above the water made us think that we could border the lake on its Eastern flank, so that we didn't have to bypass its whole Western side.

The green line to be seen on the rocks allows to border the lake on its Eastern flank

The latter option would have been much faster but since we had already made the effort of getting down to the lake, we stubbornly wanted to find a way to the hut from where we were. It wasn't until we made it to the point where it begins that we could see it actually was a very nice path in the middle of an otherwise very smooth wall. It still included some scrambling and adrenaline but we finally made it to the gap below the Tucarroya hut.

Tucarroya - The Pyrenees' oldest mountain hut

The Tucarroya hut is a place I would not like to spend a night, mainly because it stinks. Inside the hut, where I didn't want to stay for too long because of the corona virus it was ok, but on the Terraces outside the stench varied between disturbing (facing the West) and unstandable (facing the East). I didn't investigate the issue to its bottom, but it seems that any fecal matter is just being evacuated, by letting it drop or flow down the Estern side of the gap. The hut itself, though, was nice. I came to the conclusion that 130 years ago, nobody foresaw the masses of people with their evacuational needs that the 22nd century brings with it. We had somebody take a last photo us and soon headed back down to Pineta. 

A good trip Xavi!

Posing at Tucarroya

Besiberri Nord, 3014m

Besiberri Ridge

This is the accout of Xavi's and mine first post--Covid19-confinement mountain trip to Besiberri Nord. It hasn't been the first time that we've been in that area together, but it had been a while, and since back in 2009 we only climbed the middle section of the Besiberri ridge without actually summiting any mountain nowadays considered a 3000er, we paid it a second visit. 

I'm saying nowadays, because according to our "old" book, the two central Besiberri summits Pic Jolis and Pic Simó are stated as 3003 and 3002 m high. They must either have suffered from severe erosion or more accurate measurements of their height must have been carried out meanwhile. 

Since on Fridays I had to work until 7 pm, our plan was to leave right after work, sleep as high as possible and have a shot at the Besiberri Nord summit.

At 5 past 7 we were on our way to la Vall de Boï. Past Alfarràs we stopped for a Churrasco and it wasn't before 11pm that we parked our car on one of the parking lots below the Cavallers Dam (1783m). Around 30 minutes to midnight we started walking. 

Google Maps View of our trip on Friday (red up) and Saturday (blue and red down)

First of all, we had to follow the road up to the dam, from where a very well defined path follows the Eastern shore of the Cavallers reservoir for about 30 minutes. At it's end, some yellow-painted poles indicate the way to the Cavallers mountain hut. We followed these marks up to a point where we crossed a ravine by means of a fancy new bridge. On it's far side, however, we turned left, seperating from the way, and crossed another (or the same) ravine over a less sophisticated bridge. From here, we should have followed a trail that stays in the vicinity of the ravine, However, the darkness tricked us and made us follow a not non-existing path marked by very occasional cairns. That one followed the ravine too, but did so more separated from and, most importantly, some maybe 50m above it. This, fortunately, didn't turn out to be a problem, because by the time we had to cross the ravine once again, we had found a way down to it. From there on, we could follow the main trail more or less without problems. 

Just when my headlight ran out of battery, at about 2am, had we reached a lake known as Estanyet de Malavesina (2510m), where we decided to spend the night. Quickly, two moist, nearly horizontal spots big enough for a sleeping pad where found, and at half two we went to sleep. Before I fell asleep, I saw 5 clearly visible shooting stars, one of which left a trail for across a good section of the sky.

In the morning, after not too uncomfortable night, we hid our sleeping stuff near the lake and started walking again. We soon saw that there was more snow than we had expected, and that our decision to leave our crampons and ice picks in the car might not have been the wisest. 

On our way to the Peyta Gap

Without any problems we reached the Peyta Gap where we couldn't see the mountain hut we had expected to find there. A later Google search revealed that it had been dismantled over a decade ago .... so much for our old book once again.

Summit Picture

The final ascend of Besiberri Nord is said to include one more technical point in the form of a short climbing section and as we were expecting to get to that it, we suddenly found ourselves at the top of the mountain. This was not the first time that the objective difficulties of a route are not that difficult for us. Xavi and I use to have more problems with subjective difficulties such as route finding.

Lac de Mar as seen from Besiberri Nord

Since it was still early, we decided to follow the ridge and it even crossed our minds to summit Besiberri Sud. The first part was not easy but instead of staying on the "left" flank of the mountain, we found it esier to progress on the right one. Two abseil sections later, we found ourselves in a gap where we were facing a climbing section in order to continue. It looked far more difficult than expected, but the way down through the gap didn't appeal to us either, because we couldn't see the whole way down and therefore were not sure to find points to abseil from.

Punta Alta to the right

As usual in situations like this one, Xavi went first and made it through without any issue. From there one, it was a constant search for a way and occasional chairns that brought us to the two minor summits that we had already been on years ago. When we got to the second of those, we had already taken the decision to leave Besiberri Sud for another day and go back to the Estanyet de Malavesina. The first hundred or so meters down were steep and we really missed our crampons. As a result, progress was slow because we made sure to kick some good footholds into the snow. From there on, we didn't encounter any more problems other than feeling exhausted. We picked up our belongings and continued downwards towards the car where we arrived with a feeling of having had a really long day. 

Cavallers Reservoir

I must say that the ridge was harder than I had expected. Even though it's difficulty is not too high it has a very "alpine" touch. Progress is very time-consuming and to constantly have to search for the path also wears the climber out mentally.