Hiking the Pyrenees: Conclusion and tips

The Pyrenees have been the most beautiful and spectacular part of my hike. There is no doubt about it. The Pyrenees sometimes even rival the High Sierra in the US in beauty. Also the weather in the Pyrenees is usually very favourable. There might be some thunderstorms (which of course I happened to run into), but usually there is hardly any rain but endless sunshine.

But did I like the Pyrenees? No, not very much. They will definitely not be my most favourite part of this hike. Would I recommend hiking the Pyrenees to a friend? Well, that depends on the friend. Some people would absolutely love it, and then there are people like me. So what was wrong with the Pyrenees? To put it in plain, short and simple words: For me in my situation they were too difficult and too demanding to really enjoy them. Now let me explain this in more detail:

There are people who surefootedly hop from one boulder to another, run down steep mountains over loose scree and find daily elevation gains of 2,000 m easy. Then there are people like me who have a sort of distorted sense of equilibrium, slight vertigo and very often more resemble a wet sack of potatoes than a surefooted mountain goat. The first type of people will love the Pyrenees and the second will have a hard time like me. I honestly think that the GR 11 is a bit too difficult and sometimes even dangerous for such a famous and well hiked trail. Passages like the Porta de Baiau where you have to descend more than 200 m of almost vertical elevation loss over loose scree is downright dangerous. Luckily there are not too many really dangerous sections but almost every day I encountered passages were I felt uncomfortable.

In my long hiking career I have come across lots of different unpleasant moments on the trail. I have been yelling German obscenities at trail mark, hit trail posts with my trekking poles out of frustration and just started crying because the trail was so hard that I felt I could not go on any more. On the GR 11 I did not feel like that. I just felt uncomfortable. I felt uncomfortable on the steep stretches over loose scree and the endless boulder fields. I did not feel that my life was in danger. Those stretches are difficult, but not life threatening. But I know from experience that there is such a thing as bad luck. One wrong step, one slippery rock or boulder that moves and you are in the shit. You can sprain an ankle, break a leg or just hurt yourself very badly. If you encounter these passages only once a week, you just pay attention and very probably nothing will happen. But if you have to deal with this every day for several hours statistically your chances of bad luck increase dramatically. To nmake things worse I was in a rush. Instead of doing one pass every day I had to do 1 1/2. Therefore I ended up on those endless boulder fields at the end of the day when no one else was around. If I had had an accident then I would have had a real problem. I sometimes had to hike until sunset before I could camp because I had miscalculated the time again. Everything took so much longer in the Pyrenees than expected. I got frustrated because I was not making any progress. When I switched on my GPS at night I very often had to realise that it had taken my a whole long hard day to just cover 7 or 8 km as the crow flies.

I do not want to discourage anyone to hike the GR 11. It is beautiful trail and even people like me can hike it. You do not have to be a mountain god, even less athletic people can cope. But it will not be easy for them and you will sometimes feel uncomfortable. Do not even think that the Pyrenees are similar to the High Sierra. In California you have very well engineered easy trail with an easy gradient. In the Pyrenees you have boulder hopping and loose scree - and very often no trail or trail marking. But there are a few things you can do to make the GR 11 more enjoyable:

Time: According to the guidebook it takes about 45 days to hike the whole GR 11. Being an experienced fit hiker I thought I could do it in less time. Of course you can, but then you might end up feeling as uncomfortable as I did. You can definitely combine days in the beginning and end of the hike at lower altitude and sometimes even combine shorter days in the high altitude section. But keep in mind that this is a physically very demanding hike and you will need rest days, maybe more than you think. (Especially if you have hiked 3,000 km before and are tired already...). Also keep in mind that the daily stages are designed in a way that you have to do one pass per day only. If you combine two stages you will have to cope with 2 passes and sometimes 2,000 m of elevation gain. Plus you might end up in places where camping is less than ideal. I think that you should calculate at least 40 days for an enjoyable thruhike of the GR 11.

Trail marking: The trail marking has definitely improved since my last hikes in the Pyrenees more than 10 years ago. Often it is really good, usually it is decent - but sometimes it is almost non-existant. The trail marking is done by volunteers and depending who did it and when the quality varies greatly. You should definitely have maps and a GPS helps, too.

Maps and guidebooks: Thanks to a very generous donation from a German hiker I had gotten the Cicerone guidebook and the Prames maps for free. I think that this was the best combination possible, although it is far from ideal. The Cicerone guidebook dates from 2007 and urgendtly needs an update. The route between Burguette and Ochagavia has changed completely and is shown wrongly in the guidebook and even the latest edition of the Prames maps. The Prames maps are ok, but far from great. They only show elevation but not the vegetation type, so it is difficult to predict whether your chosen camp spot will have tree cover or not. Also not all side trails are shown and the maps generally are not very detailled. The times given in the Cicerone guidebook are ridiculous. The author, a middle aged man carrying a 15 kg backpack claims 5 hours of hiking time for a 16 km stretch with more than 1,000 m elevation gain. This is ambitious even under ideal circumstances, but utterly impossible in the Pyrenees for mere mortals. The times given in the Prames maps are generally 10 - 20 % longer than in the Cicerone guidebook and much more accurate. The Navarran government has produced a leaflet with elevation profiles and hiking times for the GR 11 stretch in Navarra and if you compare elavation gains and hiking times with the Cicerone guidebook you will realise that Cicerone also has incorrect elevations gains. You have to add at least 10 - 20 %, too. Still, the Cicerone guidebook has been useful as it shows water sources and potential campsites. The author only mentions campsites with water and if you are used to dry camping you will find a lot more camping possibilities.
On my GPS I had the Garmin topo for Spain and a track for the GR 11. The Garmin map was not really good either. No vegetation is shown like in France and the GR 11 is only partially shown - and then mostly wrong. Sometimes whole roads were missing and I guess Garmin´s data base is a bit outdated. The GPS track was like any track you download fromt the internet: You do not know what quality you get. Mine was sometimes incredibly good and you could see that the data was actually gathered while hiking and sometimes there were no trackpoints for a whole km.

Water and resupply: The water situation was generally very good. There were only a few stretches where there was no water for 5 or 6 hours. Usually you only have to carry food for a couple of days. In the villages there is usually a small supermarket. High prices and not much choice, but resupply is doable. Keep in mind that shops are normally closed between 2 pm and 5 pm.

Other hikers: Due to holiday time (I was hiking in August) I encountered more people in the Pyrenees than anywhere else. A lot of foreigners doing a thruhike and even more Spanish and French hikers, although they tend to do shorter hikes and stay in the refuges. Still the Pyrenees are not crowded, even in peak season.

I do not want to deter anyone from hiking the Pyrenees with this post. Just keep in mind that the Pyrenees are not a walk in the park. I think one day I will come back and hike them again - but with more time!

GR 11 Part 3

Canfranc station

 It took me a whole day to get from Bielsa to Canfranc taking 2 buses and 1 train and plenty of waiting time in between. Public transport if not very frequent in the Pyrenees but at least it exists. I had to get up at 6 am to get the first bus and arrived st Canfranc as late as 8 pm. But on the other hand hiking would have taken me almost a week.... I immediately remembered Canfranc's huge and empty train station although I had been there almost 12 years ago on my last hike in the Pyrenees. Unfortunately finding a campsite that late turned out to be a bit more difficult than expected and I ended up camping on the roof of an old bunker.

Being a hypochondriac I was worried about my knees now but beside the strange noises they did not hurt. Of course it helped that the gradients were a bit less steep now and the trail a bit easier with lower altitude. I was a happy hiker again!

Camping became somewhat of an interesting experience now. Instead of grizzly bears I now had to deal with cows, sheep and horses! Still being afraid of cows after my UK hike I always try to camp as far away from them as possible but in the Pyrenees they are free ranging and there are no fences between you and your bovine friends. So one night I had finally found camp site without cows and fresh cow shit. I was already cooking dinner when I heard the telltale cow bell ringing coming closer and closer. About 50 cows were happily passing by my tent on their way to their sleeping place. First I was about to freak out but I quickly realised that the cows weren't the least bit interested in me. They completely ignored me - and I relaxed!

Hunting hide

Two days later I had another scary camping experience. After passing several herds of sheep and horses I found a nice campsite in the middle of nowhere, far away from civilisation. I was just about to set up my tent when a hooligan on a dirt bike came roaring up the mountain. He scared me a lot because I don't want anyone to know where I am camped - and he annoyed me with the motor bike noise and smell. Half am hour later the presumed hooligan returned, but very slowly now... because he was moving sheep! My presumed hooligan was a modern shepherd. He waved friendly and disappeared with his woolly friends. I was expecting a peaceful night now but at three o'clock in the morning I was awoken by a herd of horses passing my tent. I had not know that horses are night active and was just hoping they were not night blind! But luckily none of the horses fell over my tent. There was a lot of nickering, stamping hooves and ringing of horse bells - and soon they had moved on.

By the way it was amazing hire many horses are kept in this area of the Pyrenees, especially mini horses that aster not shy at all. And I have never seen horses with horse bells before. But there where a lot of other attractions, too. Loads of old bunkers scattered all over the landscape and very elaborate hunting hides. I still don't understand why there were hundreds of them here and none at all in the rest of the Pyrenees.

Mobile supermarket

I also came across another great aspect of village life here. Coming into a little village I asked a local woman whether I could buy bread anywhere. The place was so small that there was no hope for a grocery store, but sometimes the local bar sells bread. I was told that no such a thing exists here but that she herself was just waiting for the bread man. The bread man turned out to be a man in a little van driving through all the little villages selling bread at a certain hour of the day. He was announcing himself by wildly honking his horn which made all the housewives come rushing out of their houses with money in their hands. I had just been very lucky to be at the right time at the right place. I happily bought a loaf of bread and wondered why the other woman was still sticking around. Two minutes after the departure of the bread man the fruit and fish man appeared in yet another bigger van. This was better service than in many supermarkets! I bought some peaches, had a great lunch and was a very happy hiker.

I really liked this last lower part of the Pyrenees where I was back to 30 km days but I was also looking forward to eventually getting out of the mountains. I had a parcel with guidebooks waiting for me in Irun which meant to either hurry and be there on Saturday morning or take my time and get there on Monday. I hurried and really made it in time for the post office. I decided I deserved a treat for that and found myself a nice and cheap hostal which was half a miracle as everything else seemed to be fully booked due to fiesta time. The hostal owner keeps talking to me in Spanish for hours and it is stinking hot in my room but I am happy to be done with the Pyrenees and lying on my bed not doing anything. Well, I am doing something: surfing the internet! This is a success in itself as I have had tremendous problems to achieve this. First I could not find a place where to buy a SIM card. Then I found and bought a SIM card but could not get internet reception. Then it dawned on me that the card did not come with an APN. I changed to the correct APN but still no reception for internet, only for calls. Eventually I found a shop that sold another brand of SIM cards with a friendly owner and no other customers waiting. Within 15 minutes I had a new SIM card that was actually working and had a decent internet flat rate. How have I hiked before without a smartphone?

Tomorrow I will start out on the Camino del Norte which makes me a pilgrim. Hopefully the trails will be easier now as there is a lot of sightseeing along the route. And hopefully it will cool down a bit. Despite being on the coast it is awfully and unusually hot right now: up to 35 degrees celsius.

GR 11: the decision

As I was slowly progressing down the GR 11 I had to realise a bitter fact: at this speed I would never make it to the end of my hike in time. It had been stupid to already book my onward flight and have a set date for my next adventure without enough buffer time in between. But as much as I lamented it now: it could not be changed. I could only learn a lesson for the future on route planning.

I therefore had three options now: 

• increase hiking speed tremendously which would be difficult due to the steep terrain. Also this would very much compromise my enjoyment of the hike. There is so much to see and I feel that I need more rest. I was also wondering whether I would even physically be able to hike that fast for the remaining 6 weeks.
• hike a shorter alternative but there was only one very unattractive option left: hike the GR 11 only until Somport Pass or Roncesvalles and continue on the Camino Frances. This Camino seems the most boring and definitely most overcrowded Camino of all to me. The vision of hiking with hundreds of other pilgrims next to major highways in the blazing August sun was a nightmare to me. I wanted to stick with the less popular Camino del Norte that also offered a nice changer of scenery by following the coast. 
•  skip a section of the trail which is totally against my principle of a continuous hike. But when I had studied the maps and guidebooks for the upcoming section it had dawned on me that I had already hiked it many years ago. I also realised that I dreaded these next days with thousands of metres of steep elevation gain and loss. My Achilles tendon is hurting and my left knee is making strange noises. I am not enjoying this Pyrenean mountain climbing.

Bottom line: I have decided to skip 120 km of the GR 11 that I have already hiked before. This seems like a short distance but it would have taken me at least 5 days. I will leave the trail at Bielsa, take bus and train to Canfranc and continue from there as planned to the Atlantic Ocean and the Camino del Norte.

I am not very happy about skipping a section but at least I have already hiked it before. It seems the best alternative for me. When I had made this decision it felt like a huge weight had been lifted from me. I felt so relieved that there world not be much more boulder hopping and continuous 2,000 metres elevation gains. After Canfranc the trail does not rise above 2,000 metres of altitude any more. Hopefully I well be back now to easier hiking!

GR 11 Part 2

The GR 11 has been very beautiful and very brutal. I am not quite sure whether I like it or not. My opinion changes everyday depending on how many steep metres of elevation gain I had to do...

The worst part so far has been Portella de Baiau, a high mountain pass. First there had been an endless ascent of almost 2,000 metres straight. But this had been nothing compared to the view down the other side of the pass: several hundred metres of almost vertical descent over loose scree. I could not believe that this was seriously meant to be the GR, but there was no other way... And of course no waymarks. So very slowly I started to descend, sometimes sliding down on my butt and always scared shitless of killing myself. It wasn't only me who was scared. A Spanish hiker behind me said that he as well thought that this was too dangerous for a GR. He skied down constantly falling. After that you descend over more boulder fields and of course again no waymarks when you need them but a posh refuge. I wish they would spend the money on marking the trail better and making it safer instead of splurging on refuges.

Thus had been the worst post do far but almost every day I fight with incredible steep ascents and descents and scramble over boulder fields. For me, this is not fun! I wonder why it is do difficult here whereas I can't remember anything that difficult on the PCT! Are the mountains so different here? Why can't there be nice and easy trail like in the Sierra?

Every day I kept running into my Spanish friend. In the beginning he was very shy but after I talked to him in Spanish it turned out that he had just hiked the Camino del Norte and Primitivo that are next on my list. He is also hiking the GR 11 in my direction. Although he is a much faster and younger hiker than me he takes as long as I do because he is taking hourlong breaks. His biggest problem is food. He is convinced that dehydrated crap hiker food will kill him and insists on a diet of brown rice. Only that he could not get brown rice in the last resupply town of Espot. I found resupply options pretty decent there but he could not find anything for his ecological palate. Despite having no money he decided to eat in the refuges instead and was surprised when he had to pay 18 EUR for 3 crap sandwiches. Other hikers took pity on him and gave him some dehydrated noodle soup but he told me he could not eat it after reading the ingredients. Last time I saw him he was so hungry he wanted to leave the trail. I thought of giving him some of my food but he would not eat that either... Some people have too delicate a stomach for the trail.

But I had another great encounter on the trail. I tan into an American hiker and after chatting a minute I told him about the triple crown. He then asked me whether I am the "famous" German Tourist! What a surprise! It turned out that he had hiked the AT the same year I had and had always been only a couple of days behind me reading my register entries. The hiker world is so small and I could have chatted with him forever. It came as a great relief to me that Two Litres (that is his trail name) found the trail as demanding as I do. He was well behind schedule as well. And I had thought that it was just me who suffered...

But it was not all suffering. I had a lovely half day rest in Espot where I decided to treat myself to a restaurant lunch that filled me up so much that I rolled out of the restaurant. And then I discovered a free swimming pool! It was a beautiful sunny day and I spent the afternoon with a full belly lounging in the pool and lying around reading. Wonderful! The next stage was through the National Park of Sant Maurici where camping is prohibited and I did not want to risk a fine. The park was full of tourists and rangers but luckily I managed to make it through the park in one day.

The weather is usually great but I managed to run into one of the rare extended lows. Of course this also happened to be one of the more difficult hiking days. The whole day I hiked under black clouds and rumbling thunder. Progress was incredibly slow and boulder hopping almost all the time. This is not made easier by wet rocks and I started to hate the GR 11. The weather threatened to be really bad and I wanted to camp as low as possible. I had just made it to the first rare trees when a storm was rolling in and I set up my tent not a second too early. It turned out to be a horrible night. The first storm raged for an hour and ended in bean size hail. I was worried how my tent would hold up to these big hail stones. To my very positive surprise my tent survived the rain, hail and wind almost dry! Outside you could barely see and the landscape got white with hail. I managed to fall asleep when two hours later the next storm moved in, again with heavy rain and hail. I thought it would never stop and it continued until daybreak. I woke up to singing when a hiker group passed next to my tent...and there was beautiful sunshine now. I was fed up and just wanted to get to Benasque.

It still took me half a day with no food left. When I arrived I went to the first restaurant and ate before finding a hotel. Benasque is quite nice although overpriced. I managed to buy a Spanish SIM card but no internet coverage. At least there was wifi although it does not seem to work very well on my smartphone.

I am hiking out today and hope to soon be done with the high mountain stuff. I want to hike, not climb...

GR 11 part 1

L'illa refuge

Connecting to the GR 11 had brought me into Spain but the trail would soon pass through Andorra. The weather was threatening to turn bad and I hurried to the first refuge. L'illa was a huge unmanned hut and a big group of hikers were sitting outside. Immediately I disliked them and was right. They were all cracking stupid jokes, smoking and mainly guarding their huge supply of beer cans that they were cooling in the water fountain. Inside the hut it didn't get better. A big group of Spanish hikers had arrived who now very noisily had lunch that mainly consisted of a bottle of wine each. No wonder the officials had placed a big trash can outside the hut that could be helicoptered out. It was full to the brim with beer cans and bottles. There was no tranquillity at this hut and the main target for local hikers seemed to get drunk.

When the weather cleared a bit I left wondering how far I would get. The weather forecast had been really bad predicting thunderstorms in the evening. All the ensuing huts were also full of merry hikers and so I hiked on and on despite black clouds in the sky. And then it started thundering and I realised I was in trouble. No campsites in this steep terrain. Luckily I had a guidebook for the GR 11 and that promised a shelter soon. I more or less ran down the trail hoping for the shelter to appear. Just minutes before the deluge started I saw it. Just in time!

The shelter was huge and nice but it had one big problem. It was meant to be a barbecue shelter and had a rough and uneven stone floor. Outside it was just pouring down flooding everything. It was one of those thunderstorms you don't survive dry in no matter what tent. When the rain let up a bit I checked the ground outside. Everything was still flooded and I had to face sleeping on the rough stone floor. To say it was uncomfortable is an understatement. At midnight I gave up and moved my tent outside. But as soon as I had settled in it started raining again. My tent was only sloppily set up in freestanding mode and would not withstand serious rain in this setup. Grudgingly I moved back into the shelter.. After about 1 hour of sleep I was woken up by loud techno music. Apparently some kids in the valley had decided to have some impromptu after hour techno party in an empty parking lot and noise travelled very far in the valley. At 7 am I gave up and packed. Not a minute to early as soon the first hikers appeared.

View over Encamp

Grumpily and tired I walked into Encamp in the valley. I was completely out of food and hungry on top of being tired. Things improved after a huge breakfast out of the local big supermarket. My French phonecard would not work here any more but then I discovered free wifi. At that point I decided to once be reasonable and stay. I walked into the first hotel and was surprised how cheap it was. I paid 43 Eur for a fantastic room, great AYCE dinner and breakfast buffet and free wifi. Having a rest day here had been a very wise decision. I had slept well, could repair my gear and update my blog. Life is good again!

Carcassonne to GR 11

Sunflower fields along the GR 7

My main problem now is that I am running out of time. There is so much to see and I have probably miscalculated the mileage but more on that in a separate post. Bottom line is that I have to take shorter routes than planned in order to be finished in time for my next adventure. Being an organised ex business woman I had already foreseen that possibility in the planning stage and prepared several alternative routes and I now took one of them. Instead of changing onto the GR 36 and meeting the GR 11 at Puigcerda I continued on the GR 7.

Along the Canal Midi

This first treated me with a nice albeit short walk along the Canal du Midi. I love canal walks. They are easy, flat and fast and remind me of my happy narrow boating times in the UK. Equally nice and fast was an ensuing walk on an old railway line. A couple of days out of Carcassonne I could already see the Pyrenees looming out of the horizon promising lower temperatures and a relief from the heat. Every day I camped at higher altitude and soon I would cross my first pass over 2,300 m, the highest point so far on this hike. The GR 7 had been quite easy so far and I expected a smooth run to the GR 11 on the Spanish side. Again I was awfully wrong.

I was approaching my first high Pyrenean pass in the evening expecting a quick hop over and a camp on the other side. But I could not see any feasible way to cross the mountains... The GR was routed over a huge steep boulder field and then an incredibly steep trail up to the pass. Not being the most sure footed hiker I hate boulder fields, especially when being alone and late in the evening. But somehow I made it to the top only to find the next surprise. The GR 7 had been re routed and the marked trail did not coincide with neither my GPS track nor my map. Should I bushwhack or follow the trail and hope for the best? Bushwhacking in this steep terrain seemed like suicide and so I decided to follow the markings that luckily brought me down the right valley and to decent camp sites.

The same thing happened the next day. What looked like a nice and easy walk along a stream turned out to be a boulder hopping disaster. 4 km took me 2,5 hours and I felt like Mahoosuk Notch revisited. Again I was way behind schedule. I went through dramatic mood swings: one moment I was overwhelmed with joy and happiness because the mountain scenery was so incredibly beautiful... and then I stumbled across the next boulder field thinking that I should just quit this route instead of risking injury and death by boulder hopping. Part of my misery stemmed from the fact that I just had a sketchy map instead of a decent guidebook with descriptions and times. Things would be better on the GR 11 for which I had detailed maps and a good guidebook. But I still had to get there and this would be tricky.

My French map only showed French trails and there was a gap of about 5 km between the GR 7 and the GR 11. Normally not a problem, in the worst case you just bushwhack. But after nearly killing myself on several boulder fields bushwhacking was out of question for me. Either there was a trail or I would have to walk a long detour. But none of my maps or people I asked could confirm if there was a trail or not. I decided to walk into Porte Puymorens, buy food and try to find a good map. Good plan, but it didn't work as Porte Puymorens had a train station but no shop whatsoever... In my frustration I hopped on the next train to la Tour, the train terminus and border town to Spain. A newspaper booth in the over dimensioned train station brought the answer to my trail question. According to a recent map there was a connecting trail between the GR 7 and 11, called GR 107. Good news since all the GRs are waymarked. I even found a small supermarket and thus fortified I took the bus back. The bus dropped me in a thunder storm that quickly passed.

To my big surprise there weren't any boulder fields on my next ascent, only cows. I am a bit cow phobic and these beasts did have horns! We eyed each other suspiciously and then danced around each other. But where would I camp in cow country? I am horribly afraid of being trampled on in my sleep by cows. Luckily there was a shepherd's hut in the middle of all those cow pastures where I spent my last night in France. And the next morning everything went according to plan. Up a pass and yes, there was the GR 107 that eventually brought me into Spain and onto the GR 11. One last surprise worth mentioning: during all my 1 1/2 month in France I had not met any French person who volunteered to speak English with me, bit on my last two days I met two French hikers who chatted with me in fluent English. And on my very last day in France the young train conductor sold me a ticket in fluent English.. There is hope!