Thursday July 27, 22.1km/13.7mi

Refuge Wallon (267.8km/1865m) (France) to Cabane de Lourdes (289.9/1950m) (France)

Thankfully, we again woke to sunny skies, and the refuge looked so cool all illuminated in the darkness.

It’s always a great day when you get to see the sunrise from a trail.

Most of the morning was a gradual climb up the next valley.

It was a pretty easy climb all the way up to Lac d’Arretille. There were plenty of other people camping there, even though it was a very windy and exposed area.

We had a tiny little stream crossing, which was entertaining since the guidebook had mentioned it as a possibility difficult crossing. It was just an easy hop across on large stones!

Now that we were pretty high up in the valley, the marmots started to reappear again.

When we got to the top of the climb, we crossed through a col and were back in Spain again.

It was another traverse on talus to the next col, but this time we didn’t have any mis-navigation and the trail was nice and flat.

At the next col we took a snack break. I looked back and it was amazing to see the little trail we had taken all the way across that talus field, clearly visible in the rocks.

As it often is, it was really windy in the col. We started back down the other side and descended it into France.

It was a glorious sunny day, one of the few times I think that has happened while entering France. We passed a dozen other hikers coming up the hill, and it was fun to have some brief conversations in Spanish. I’m definitely getting better at my 2nd language.

I could see all the way down into the deep glacial valley.

Once we got down into the valley, that was a great view of some small glaciers on this massive peak.

We stopped at a refuge for a lunch break, it was 11am and a little early but it seemed like a beautiful spot for a meal.

We spent almost an hour at the refuge, eating lunch, charging our phones, and just generally admiring the amazing views in all directions. Adam saw that thunderstorms were in the forecast, so we decided to get moving over the next pass before the clouds gathered. The climb up to the pass went by quickly, as I was focused on the views of the nearby peaks.

We made it to the top of the pass in an hour, much faster than the expected time of 1.5 hours according to the guidebook. Instead of taking a break at the pass/col, we continued another 10 minutes to the next hut.

We took another break at the Refuge Baysselance, which was a much smaller hut with a nice wooden interior.

Because of the incoming storm, we planned to spend the night at a cabin just a couple hours away. Since we would arrive so early, I bought a liter of wine (€10) from the hut and packed it out in one of my water bottles. I figured it would provide a little entertainment for the evening!

We left the hut, and begin the big 1000m descent into the valley.

The views were epic, looking down so far into the valley.

And of course there were many marmots along the way at this elevation.

Surprisingly, there were even a few little manmade caves carved in the Cliffside next to the trail.

Yup, it was a long way down.

We hiked by one of the longest waterfalls in France, I think it was something like 600 meters long.

Still going downhill….

There were tons of smaller waterfalls too.

Finally we got down to the valley floor, and passed by a small manmade lake.

By now the clouds had started to gather, and we hiked a little more quickly. The first little cabin we tried seemed to be occupied by a local Shepherd, so we continued onto the next cabin 30 minutes away. When we arrived at that cabin, we met two other hikers who had just arrived. Julio and Juan were from Madrid and very friendly, they were just finishing a 4-day loop hike through the National Park.

They had a bunch of extra food, so they offered us some and I offered some of our wine in return. Wine and cheese party! Half an hour later another hiker showed up, Emma from France. And then 2 more hikers from Paris arrived too. We had 7 people in a 4-person cabin so it was nice and cozy!

Everyone was very friendly, and we enjoyed watching the big thunderstorm come through from the comfort of a dry cabin. Emma is hiking with a small guitar, and she played several songs for us. She played a different song in Basque, French, Spanish, and finally English….it was quite impressive. Adam also played a couple Irish songs, and one of the French guys played a song too. It felt like a magical little evening in our cabin. Everybody went to sleep by 10pm, to the sound of thunder and lightning outside.