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| Besiberri Ridge |
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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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