We arrived in the French town of Beiritz and after camping at a site next to the airport (with no supper since we had pasta and no petrol) we swiftly made our way to the towns of Lourdes and Cauteret by bus, train, and foot. Once in Cauteret we had to wait for a few of our group members that had made their own travel plans. While waiting we wandered the streets doing the tourist thing. |  |
 | Once the wandering the city got boring we decided we decided to go swimming since the weather was so unbelievably nice. Most of the group went to an indoor swimming pool, Fearless leader and I went wandering upstream to go for a paddle in the great outdoors. We walked a good mile before we found a reasonable site - and even then the paddle was short lived due to swarms of mosquitos and lots of stinging nettles. Certainly hanging by the pool would have been wiser, but would it have been as much fun as wandering through nettles and biting insects? |
Hey everyone is smiling! And why not smile? The weather was lovely, the terrain not too tough, the rations relatively filling, and the town capable of providing a fair number of luxuries (like crepes!). Note the operative term in the previous sentence - "was". Ominous isn't it. |  |
 | Our first real day of hiking was fantastic. It was very sunny though, and while I am used to throwing on globs of sun cream and pretty good at protecting myself from burns the British are not (thus the reason they tend to look like lobsters when they visit beaches). Anyhow this is Lecester and me halfway through the first full day. |
The saphire sky allowed us magnificent views of the peaks we would be climbing in the days to come. |  |
 | Very little can compare with the majesty of this area's dramatic peaks. We set our first camp at the edge of this lake. |
Sally looking a little weary... The weather went a bit sour on our second and third days and our climbs became much more extreme (note: fewer smiles). |  |
 | Le Breche du Rolande - Roland's Breach. It is the Gateway between France and Spain. Why it is named after Roland is puzzling since legend has it that that Charlemagne was the one that broke through the Pyrenees to prepare for an assault on Spain. |
We had not anticipated so much snow and had little of the appropriate gear. Slopes like this one (which I have named the "Slope of Doom") really should be crossed with ice axes since just a slightly misplaced step could easily lead to a fifty meter fall down the side of the slope. What's really astonishing is that this was "plan B", our originally intended route was completely impenetrable without crampons, ropes, and axes. |  |
 | The weather got worse and worse as the days wore on. I wish I could have taken photos of some of our travel in total downpoars and hail but I sensed that my digital camera would not take kindly to such conditions. One shower, one storm, a bit of hail... no big deal. But multiple days of the stuff leaves your gear damp. No matter how good Gore-Tex claims to be it does not handle such conditions well at all... nothing got soaked (I had no cotton) but everything got cold and icky. |
We got so frustrated with the constant storms (continual thunderclaps can keep even the most exhausted trekkers from catching some sleep) that Beccy got in touch with her Sioux ancestry (I hear she is 1/34 Sioux indian) and started a series of sun dances. |  |
 | Even with bad weather the views of the waterfalls remained unbelievable. |
On our walk up to La Grande Cascade (Europe's tallest waterfall) I got in touch with my indian ancestry (I am 1/20 Crow) and performed my own sun dance. |  |
 | All the dancing paid off and the sun eventually broke through. (about time) |
With the sun finally back, drying out the gear became a priority. |  |
 | Morale bounced right back with the sunshine and a bit of rest in the town of Gavarnie (I discovered the wonder of le crepe chantilly in that town - SO good. |
Chris and Steve. Yes, Steve is mentally unstable. |  |
 | Richard, the future leader of the fellwanderers, just hours before he drank from a stream and contracted a really nasty stomach infection. |
Goofing around while trying to dry the tents. |  |
 | Our trek was punctuated by lots of short breaks, particularly when the weather was good. |
Richard and I jumped into the ice cold river for a bit of a paddle much to the dismay of everyone else who thought the water far to chilling for a swim. The rapids were great fun to float through - ah, I miss my rafting! |  |
 | Lots of pretty flowers. |
It's time to play the music, it's time to light the lights... Hey its Muppet on the move! Those poles may seem a bit silly on such gentle terrain, but they were really quite useful on the icy passes. |  |
 | Getting into towns was nice for many reasons. 1. Many town camping areas had showers (nice for getting rid of the smell). 2. Most towns had bakeries and thus sold food (trekking rations suck... especially the rations chosen by our fearless leader - who the heck wants to carry tins of sardines on their back? more importantly, who actually wants to eat sardines while in the wilderness - PASTA people, it's all about carbohydrates!) Ok, enough ranting, in this photo from left to right are Lecester, Thomas, and Sean. |
Dinners in town tended to be above average... especially if someone other than I leader cooked. Sally and I made taco salad and sangria one evening. This may sound mundane to you Californians reading this, but hey, this new to many of the people in our group. The taco salad was really popular, but many felt the sangria need a bit more of a kick - thus Sean, Steve, and Lecester took it upon themselves to "improve" things a bit by adding copious amounts of alcohol (that brown jug was loaded with wine). |  |
 | With such fearless leadership and such talented map readers in our group we were never lost, really! I think Pete has gotten more photogenic over the course of this year... the "deer staring into the headlights" look is gone. |
The waterdogs went at it again. I should never have gone swimming in this lake. It was bloody cold and I came out smelling like fish. |  |
 | On our last day Sally, Muppet, Alex, and I decided to stick around in the local area and visit a few of the castles and fortified churches rather than take a day walk up a mountain. These ruins were well over four hundred years old and were built to defend against medieval bandits and rogue horsemen. |
This fortified church dates back to 1400 ad. The age and the history behind the building was so cool, it amazed me how little my British friends seemed to care about this stuff, I think it has something to do with the high concentration of history in Europe - they see history everywhere and are just not excited by ruins like these. |  |
 | On our last evening together this weird french guy kept wandering over to our camp site and commenting on how bad our food looked. Through some odd conversation that I just don't understand, Steve and this guy got into a conversation in German. The guy asked Steve why we were eating baby food. |
Doesn't look like baby food, does it? Well, it may not look good, but this dinner actually turned out rather well. |  |
 | And what would the trip have been without a proper hero pose. The wilderness revitalizes me in a way that nothing else can. I know it sounds strange, but to keep direction in my life I need to constantly wander. |