Thursday July 20, 35.0km/21.8mi
Shoulder of Urkulu Peak (112.2km/990m) (France) to Cabane d’Ardané (146.3km/1310m) (France) +0.9km to cabin
We packed up our wet tents at 8am and hiked up the rest of the climb. The fog had lowered overnight and now we were walking in it completely.
After a couple of kilometers we got to the top of the climb, and had a nice ridge walk in the fog. Soon afterwards though, the Sun started to burn off the fog and break through with patches of light.
When we left the meadow and entered a forest, the filtered sunlight looked amazing.
And then all of a sudden, the fog started to burn off rapidly and we could see for many miles.
We could even see all the way to the mountain we would climb later this afternoon, Pic d’Orhy.
It was really cool to watch the process of fog burning off. The warmer winds from Spain were blowing over the ridges into France and erasing the fog.
We had a pretty long descent through a beautiful forest, which was really enjoyable and felt warm with the sunlight coming through the leaves.
Once we were at the bottom of the descent, we turned onto a road briefly where there was a trail junction sign to decipher. And cows, lots of cows.
I love that somebody had taped a little cardboard sign here, “Fromage”. I hardly know any French words but I do love cheese.
A few minutes later we encountered a small roadblock of sheep which was pretty hilarious. Maybe they were protesting the cheese if it was made from sheep’s milk? Ha!
We left the road and had another climb, up through forest and meadows. Eventually we climbed high enough where the fog found us again.
When we got to the top of the climb it was noon, and we decided to stop at the Iraty tourist complex to have lunch. I bought a can of tuna with beans and rice, some fruit, and a Basque seltzer drink. And it felt so civilized eating on a picnic table.
After lunch we continued uphill through patchy fog to a nice ridge walk.
Since there weren’t really any views in the distance, I didn’t mind walking in the forest. Not having views meant I paid more attention to the flora and fauna at my feet.
And then came the big event of the day, the final part of the climb to the summit of Pic d’Orhy.
It’s the first time on this trail we will be over 2000 meters in elevation. Once we got up to about 1600 meters, we were above the fog!
It was a pretty rocky ridge, and slow going, but totally worth the effort.
The summit slowly got closer.
There was one little technical section where we had to drop off the ridge to avoid a cliff. It involved walking down some loose scree and back up a steep slope.
These little high altitude flowers were everywhere on the ridge.
It was so cool looking back to where we had come from, and seeing it buried in fog.
The summit!
There was a little metal monument on the summit which was written in Basque.
We spent 20 minutes hanging out on the summit, and then got moving again since we had awhile to hike before we got to a reasonable camping spot.
The trail slowly descended the ridge and I enjoyed every minute of the views.
Pretty soon though, we dropped back below the fog line and then it was quite a bit colder and even a little wet. It was a pretty cold and miserable 6km walk to our planned camping spot at Cabane d’Ardané. The cabin was a welcome refuge from the blowing fog and mist.
The inside was dark but very nice and clean and had bunk space for 8 people.
When we arrived, there was one other person there, a French guy who was about to go to sleep. We chatted for a few minutes using my very poor French while I made dinner. He went to bed, and then another couple showed up and spent the night as well, so there were five of us in the cabin. I was cozy and dry on the top bunk and had a great night’s sleep.