| Distance | 12 km |
| Time | 4hrs 45 mins |
| Difficulty | 1175m climbing |
| Good for | Shorter day on the slopes |
The overnight campsite was a very pleasant one with lots of open space, few campers and a great lookout over the valley. What wasn’t quite so good was all five of us being asked to bunk down in the same room with no air flow, stifling heat and mattresses with plastic sheets. Jason managed to haggle on the room to get us a second one, but we were stuck with the sweaty mattresses. In 80F+ heat, it didn’t make for a comfortable night.
We also had some fairly grumpy waiting staff to contend with but after a few beers and wines that didn’t bother us too much.
Helpfully. the campsite was situated about 1 km into stage 10 so shortening the walk and making for a 12 km day in total.
Despite the lack of distance, the day still proved to be quite hard as the first 9 km of the day were uphill at an average of 10%, with only the last 3km downhill to the refuge in Lizara.
The first few kilometres of the day gained the height that we had lost in our descent to the campsite the previous day. This meant walking through the woods, and whilst the views weren’t particularly interesting, we did at least feel protected from the heat.
After the first mile or so, we hit a clearing with a cafe to the side. This was only accessible by walking through a herd of cows with one rather angry bull keeping a close eye on us.
Here we are, inspecting the route map immediately after passing the bull. Dom was particularly pleased as he is sporting a red rucksack.
Back into the woods we continued to climb, but now traversing across the edge of a mountain. Here is Andrew and Peter climbing up with a fairly precipitous drop to their left, a piece of string forming a less-than-robust safety rope.
Through the trees and up onto the open mountains there isn’t much shade to be had. With temperatures in the mid to late 80’s and with a full backpack the ‘short day’ still packed a punch. Here we are approaching the top of the day’s climb.
A quick break for lunch…
At the top of the Collau de la Foraton in Valles Occidentales, a look back from whence came. We’re now at just over 2000m elevation and (as per the signpost) there’s 3.3km still to go until Refugio de Lizara. At least its all downhill from here!
This is the view of what’s yet to come. We lose a significant amount of high pretty quickly then follow the valley before heading down to the right.
Some lovely expansive views in these parts of the Pyrenees and there’s very few people about to share them with!
At the refuge, here’s Andrew looking forward to a peaceful nights sleep with his 4 co-walkers!
Life Two 