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A volunteer is sought to assume complete editorial control of the Club’s quarterly Newsletter from the end of 2011, soliciting content, selecting that which is most appropriate, liaising with our proof-reader and interfacing directly with the graphics designer who takes care of layout. If this challenge is of genuine interest to you, please contact the Club Secretary via the AAC(UK) Office for further details.
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Four Days around Goriz Refuge in the Aragonese Pyrenees
by Daphne Martin Heyring
Laden, we climbed fast and steeply to 2500m, rainbows over tumbling streams, autumn tinted trees, choughs, izards, sweaty conditions; but everything changed drastically as we topped a ridge. Now icy snow blasted across boulders and arid precipices.
‘No path, no cairn.... No sign of any route.’ ‘We must skirt those peaks....crossing above the gorges....’ ‘Peaks? Where?’ ‘....behind the weather....’ ‘But....that’s round sheer cliffs....and in horizontal sleet!....
Too cold to stop.... motion resumed towards the black crags. Eventually, on a boulder, appeared the names of two distant summits well above our objective. My heart, already in my boots, froze solid! However, later a path materialised and, painted on a rock....was ‘Goriz’. Relief! No one fell off chains or disintegrated in the vicious wind. The weather calmed. Views were terrific. In Goriz Refuge, with mattresses on the third shelf up, it was harder climbing to bed than any other scrambling on the trip!
To reach the legendary Brecha de Rolando, a spectacular cleft in the spine like border between France and Spain, we dodged heavy clumps of snow that splattered and downpours of long icicles which clattered off impressive cliffs. Folded anoraks became helmets! To avoid the freezing bombardment we skirted lower. It was tough scrambling to regain altitude towards a dramatic icing-sugared pinnacle. Rupert finally lowered a rope. Others tottered up a horrendous scree, terrifying to watch. Then to avoid renegotiating the nasty incline, the only way back down was to climb further and detour home. The effort was entirely worthwhile, with peaks below and all around; 10 hours on the hills.
Next day two young men with impressive kit, including 4 ice-picks, left at 08.00. More modestly we started an hour later, making seven people in all on the slopes of fabled Mont Perdido, the second highest peak in the largest limestone massif in Western Europe. At 10.00 our ‘friends‘, having attempted two wrong routes, accepted advice and charged off again. Next seen trying to scale sheer unclimbable faces, they were shown cairns, but were last observed sitting disconsolately on a ridge which we had all been warned to shun. We never saw them again. Are they still up there!
We five braved steep scree and frozen snow to reach the top at 3355m, then descended to much acclaim at the hut. In seven languages, a merry evening, and much wine, was enjoyed with the warden‘s excellent supper. Finally the descent to reach the grandiose Ordesa Gorge included 50m of easy, though almost vertical chains. Twenty vultures circled ghoulishly overhead....
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Last updated 04 December 2007