Wednesday August 2, 22.2km/13.8mi
La Besurta Trailhead (414.8km/2000m) (España) to Lac Tort de Rius (437.0km/2320m) (España)
We slept in a little bit and got hiking at 7:30am, through a green valley full of cows. It was cool to watch the sunrise turn the tops of the mountains pink.
We followed a little stream which had a very unique feature, in that it disappeared into a cave and flowed underground. Bizarre.
We hiked gradually uphill all morning, in the shade of the mountains around us.
Eventually the trail steepened and headed up toward the next pass.
There were little tarns everywhere along the way.
The top part of the climb was fantastic and one of my favorite parts of the day. We hiked up granite slickrock and it was really fun, it reminded me of the Hayduke trail that I had just hiked.
The official trail goes through a pass, but we decided to hike the peak right next to it, since it was only 80 m higher. The summit of Tuc de Mulleres (3010m) was unsurprisingly rocky.
At the top we found a Spanish man there with his dog.
One of my favorite parts of being on a summit is looking around me and seeing the world laid out like a map.
Looking to the West:
Adam standing by the summit cairn.
We easily descended the summit and down to the pass. At the pass there was a tricky steep spot that required some careful downclimbing.
We spent much of the rest of the day descending through a valley, past some alpine lakes and waterfalls.
Near the bottom of the climb we encountered one tiny steep section where somebody had thoughtfully mounted a steel cable as a handrail.
I could tell we were close to the bottom of the descent when everything was green again.
The stream we had been following all afternoon was now quite large and roaring.
Since it was a lower elevation we were able to hike through a nice pine forest.
It soon changed back into an open meadow and we soon arrived at the Hospital de Vielha, which is just a collection of old buildings.
We spent an hour there snacking and drying out our tents, and using the phone reception to make plans for accommodation for the next town. Finally we continued on and started the next climb.
This part of the HRP is on the GR11 so the trail was easy to follow.
At the top of that climb was a huge alpine lake, Lac de Rius.
We walked along it for 40 minutes, it was massive.
At 6:30 we decided to stop for the evening at the next alpine lake, Lac Tort de Rius. It was quite windy up here so it took some time to find a spot that was sheltered by some boulders. Hopefully the wind doesn’t get worse!