Pics de Vallhiverna (Picos de Ballibierna)

“All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveller is unaware.”  Martin Burber

This clip dies not do justice to the bleakness of the landscape that surrounded me; nor the oppressiveness of the wind howling around me. (Nor my bible reading skills). Nor does it show the self- chastisement eddying about my thoughts or the desolation and barrenness closing in with every inch of altitude.  No trees, no grass, no lichen, no, no, no, life! (only me) Earlier on the trail a group of young Spaniards had briefed me on the path around the peaks ahead.  They made it sound so straight forward, so pedestrian, so doable that my head was duped into a false expectation that was never going to appear real. Meanwhile, as I staggered up towards the thin grey line that etched itself across the front of this glaciated slag-heap, I could see another couple of Spaniards struggling up ahead.  They were a couple who had passed me while I was filling my water bottle at a stream below.  I sensed then that all was not  right between them, and wondered if it was the bad karma from this aesthetically challenged charcoal hump that had soured their day out. 

The path was about ten inches wide and gave way with each footstep.  The grey shale that was this mountain refused to be compacted, refused to aid the climber, refused comfort.  The discomfort increased with the gradient until relief came only as the terrain shifted to solid mountain, this relief was nothing to light a cigar for though, as now, tired, dry, and buffeted by the odd wandering vortex of lost wind I was climbing straight up a sixty degree face. 

At the col as usual, the child was born, pain forgotten and panoramas, views and vistas cherished. A broad swathe of ridge-top horned round from me to my right. Straight ahead a valley stretched around to the left.

The couple were sitting apart, either side of the path eating their fruit and sandwiches.  They didn't offer any conversation, and not wanting to intrude I walked through them and stopped at the next projecting buttress on this unfriendly mound. I left my rucksack and carried on round towards the peaks.