Distance covered: 25 miles
I’m happy to face one final road walk today. The wimp in me got scared yesterday and I’m fine with that middle ground in not giving up but taking the less compromising route. It won’t be a memorable journey but I’ll be worry free no matter the weather. Real wilderness will need to wait a bit longer.
Distance covered: 28 miles
It starts overcast and windy, at least the wind will be on my back. The other good news is that I’ll be on a real hiking trail today. A rare, welcome event, I won’t find another such trail until the final 2 days of the trip. I also know this trail is easy to follow, not only from reports but from previous, own experience, and this is the other, funny part: I was hiking on this trail 16 years back, no less. Back then, the same northerlies as expected today left me dripping wet and cold to the point that I bailed out mid-way. I’m here now to fill that gap.
Distance covered: 29 miles
Day 2 is typically a tough one in fastpacking trips with no quarter. It is the day when the body is already beaten by the previous day’s effort but not yet used to the constant beating of a thru-hike. I can’t take it easy though. If I mean to cross Iceland in 13 days, I can’t just take it easy, not even for one day, not even for day 2.
Distance covered: 28 miles
It’s overcast and gloomy as I wake up in Akureyri but I commit to not worry about the weather, at least until I start the actual hiking. I still need to get to the starting point and that is a few hours bus ride away. This is Iceland and the most mundane bus trip is a spectacular event so I sit back and relax.
Does it apply at all?
The Lightweight Backpacker in the High Latitudes
You’ll have heard the argument many times: UL is fine and dandy in predictable, mild environments like (the example goes on and on) the US southwest. Such argument is usually a way of saying it doesn’t work anywhere else with a rougher climate. It may look like basic nay-saying but it may undermine your UL plans when visiting such a place as Iceland1.
Pack / Tent / Sleeping bag / Mat / Stuff sacks / Clothing / Towel / Poles / Stove
This is about gear, Iceland and myself. It’s all mixed together. I mean to assess how my kit worked in Iceland but some of the sections are necessarily decontextualized, if only because I love to talk about gear, in essence because I’m talking about myself.
Jon Ley’s Plhumf.com website is almost as old school as mine but I needed to look nearly nowhere else. His 2006 trip fits exactly my idea for this traverse and I’ll actually be following his footsteps as long as they haven’t been erased by some new lava flow.
Access / Direction of travel / Hiking window / Maps / Digital / Resupply / Fuel / Huts / SAR
The information here is what I’d needed to know when planning this trip. It is organized in a north to south fashion, where applicable. It should be easy to apply to a south to north trip anyway.
Cool facts / Terrain & Relief / Hiking grounds / Camping / Weather / Wildlife / Landscape
It was this beautiful. Consistently
Hiking coast-to-coast-something is a very powerful idea, it just makes sense from a travelling standpoint. It gives the traveler perspective over the territory. It makes for a trip with a beginning and an end.
Final steps of the traverse. The Atlantic in the background
Crossing Iceland was intense. Here are a few relevant thoughts
I dream of the gear I’ll take to Iceland. These are my current thoughts:
Stephenson’s Warmlite 2C
Wamlite 2C in the Lapland hills
It’s exposed and potentially windy in the Iceland highlands so the shelter of choice must be wind-worthy. The other key factor in shelter choice is sandstorms, which may not be an obvious feature of a sub-polar region but it is in this particular case: Iceland is all lava. In the highlands, fine volcanic dust covers wide areas devoid of any vegetation that could help stopping it being blown around. When it is, it gets into the most intimate corners.
Thinking ultralight challenges the doctrine and the doctrine inevitably strikes back. The following is about some of the usual arguments thrown on the ultralight style
Just when you thought you were done with any new flavor of “packing”, let me add another one…
First it was GSM. Then it was GPS. Then I got PLB.
Must not care about aesthetics
One of the problems with rain jackets is what happens at their lower edge: water drips down over a sensitive area where it soaks your pants at pocket height. It then soaks your underwear. It there’s enough water, capillary action may soak the lower section of your tops too.
Human pressure is an environmental issue pretty much everywhere the average human can reach. Protection figures are the common answer but they have limited effectiveness as they often fail to address the root of the problem: ease of access.
This is now an internationally famous trail, allegedly the most famous in the world. Many hikers from abroad come over for the journey. In the information age, one could think it’s easy to get such information about anything imaginable, yet it’s surprisingly easy to find people whose expectations about this trail were not met.
I had this revelation moment once during the early days of my hiking career. It was a very silly thing but it was symbolic. It opened a big door.
You won’t find many resources on this route in anything that’s not Spanish. Actually, there aren’t many in Spanish either. Most internet resources and guidebooks focus on one-day activities and most of them will be about climbing peaks. Overnighting outside is not a popular thing, neither is long distance hiking.
The high pressure conditions remain and the weather should be clear. I don’t know what caused yesterday’s fogs, maybe some cold air mass in the area. I would expect a new, clear day today no matter how dark and thick the fog was yesterday but I have a plan in case it remains: the track I was following would actually take me out of the mountains. It’d be acceptable given this is my last day of hiking.
I wake up to a dry tarp and a view of a frosty valley below, fully endorsing yesterday’s camp choice. Actual site and orientation missed the best mountain view but I could see sunset and sunrise instead:
Good morning
In my lowest altitude camp I wake up to negative temps, high humidity and a good frost all over the place as a consequence. This is a classic example of temp inversion driven by sustained high pressure conditions: cold air sinks and humidity condenses. During the night there’s no sun to warm things up so the system stays locked.
In the morning my tarp is dry and the grass around is dry as the valley bottom has frosted over. What a huge difference a short distance can make in the camping experience and how much nicer it is to pack a dry shelter.
Frost in the valley below
A small cirque at the very headwaters of a cantabrian valley, that’s the definition of the perfect overnight spot and I feel fortunate to wake up in such glorious place. The only downside in a mid-November morning is how long the sun takes to shine. I leave the area before I get a chance of getting any warmth. Morning lights are beautiful anyway.
Yesterday’s last effort was more than a last push for the sake of performance, it was also a statement.
It’s often easy to skip crest sections by joining saddles along the slopes or the base of the hill. This is fine as it is all part of what a High Route means: the idea is to follow a coherent line along the divide. Then there are cases like yesterday evening’s: the road to the ski resort runs parallel to the divide crest and leads to a gentle climb back to the top on a service track. I could have done all that in less than a couple of hours. It is not cheating, it’s just the -in this case- easy way.
The night goes in between heaven and hell. Heaven because that’s what the night usually is: a time to relax, do nothing but rest, heal the wounds of the day’s work, feel at peace with the world. Hell because sometimes the world gets aggressive and you become a tiny piece of nothing at its mercy.
I took the early morning train from Leon to Busdongo de Arbas, 4 km down the road from the Pajares pass in the divide. The train line goes north across the plains and into the foothill mountains, along a narrow, winding valley.
At maximum load
I got this pack as my new thru-hiking pack. No frivolity, I really needed a new one. My old thru-hiking pack was worn out beyond usability after more than 10 years. Not bad. I researched the market for a pack that would meet my requirements and the Southwest won.
I took the divide at the Pajares road pass after a short hike up the road from the nearest railway station. The choice wasn’t random: that’s where my previous hike in the High Route finished a few years back. I would hike east and as far as I could go in 8 full hiking days.
This is very personal and only tangential to the actual route. It’s about challenges, fears and how I’d cope with it all. The challenge will be at a rather emotional level.
Day 6: when my smile was genuine
Hiking the High Route in the off-season was something I could do. Feeling comfortable about it was a different thing. This latter was my challenge.
This is a summary of some specifics about the Cantabrian Ranges and their High Route traverse.
Hiking the crest
Summer-style, multi-day backpacking in late fall requires some adaptation, not only in the gear: I usually take lower level, less exposed routes and/or plan for less days out in a row. This time I chose a summer route in summer style: 8 hiking days, self supported and a seamlessly compromising location.
November is a tricky time to backpack in the northern Iberia ranges: weather can be anything in a wide range of scenarios. One of them is very harsh, including cold, wet, fog, snow or the whole bunch.
The Cantabrian Ranges
A weekend (2 days and 2 nights) out in mild, post-summer conditions is not the most demanding use case for a pack this size. The Southwest was not fully loaded with only two days worth of food and minimal spare clothing, base weight below 4 kg. Yet it was my new toy and I was eager to try it. This is how it turned out.
I have a white pack
My previous long-distance-backpacking pack is more than 10 years and thousands of miles old. That’s a lot for a lightweight pack. I’ve used it until it’s so worn out that it’s not usable anymore.
This is not about outdoor stuff DIY on a grand scale but more about the great power of a small thing, be it a sewing machine or the skill and dedication to sew manually. Works the same.
Throughout the years I’ve met wildlife many times, as it’d be expected. Some encounters have been very special, be it for the particular animal, the circumstances or the quality of the encounter. Yet it’d be easy for me to pick one up. This is why:
What follows is a summary of the common questions about backpacking in Spain that I’ve been questioned or heard about when travelling abroad or over the net. It’s meant for a wide audience. If a question/answer seems obvious to anybody, consider it will probably not be so to others.
Where “winter” stands for mountain weather in the mid latitudes for that half of the year
Looks like black&white except for the tent
General belief about winter conditions in the mid latitudes relates to highly technical activities where the activity itself is the goal and not the means to get somewhere: climb the mountain for the sake of climbing it, not to cross onto the other side.
There’s nothing really fancy in the layering paradigm. In essence, it’s what many of us already do in the urban environment as a daily routine in response to changing conditions like getting into the office block: layer down one coat.
In the backcountry, there are additional factors though:
Warming up cold hands, armpit technique
Hands usually have a problem when working in sustained cold and wet conditions. Mine surely do. I say “working”: it should be fine if you can keep the expected activity level with hands in pockets but this is often not the case.
The last time I met Shaun “Shooter” Carrigan was in September 2006. We had been meeting regularly on the trail for the last couple months, shooting footage, sharing trail time, talking about life. He told me he wanted to have a film ready for December. I didn’t believe he could.
It’s been almost 7 years but it doesn’t matter: the document is still applying and the result is fantastic. I just watched it myself for the first time and I can say I loved it.
The Alps don’t stand out for the wildness and there are no big mammals to worry about. The goat-like chamois and bouquetin seem the most ubiquitous among the sizeable ones, relatively easy to spot and I never seem to remember which one is each.
Another common trail companion is the shy marmot, bound to be the main character in this comment.
The GR 5 is well documented. As any GR trail in France, it’s got its own set of guidebooks, consistently edited by the FFRP (Fédération Française de la Randonnée Pédestre which approximately stands for French Hiking Federation). These books are in French and due to the popularity of this route among English speaking (or, in general, non-French speaking) people, UK publisher Cicerone released a guidebook that covers just the Alpine Traverse.
Most of the stuff is just as usual. I’ll comment on those new or somehow relevant items.
Inov8 Terroc 330
Maybe the most comfortable shoes I’ve worn on the trail, surely the lightest and probably the less durable. The Terrocs performed well and were very gentle on my feet but barely made it to trip end. The shoe body was still ok but the soles suffered; one of them got a crack under the ball of the foot that turned into an alpine glacier crevasse exposing the midsole which eventually also cracked.
Going through villages is something that happens almost everyday on the GR 5; usually, more than once a day so it’s a key part of the experience. With recreation being such a big part of the scene in the Alps, it’s taken over a lot of the rural environment and some locations have more lodges and restaurants than farms and sheds. I tried to not spend much time in the urban but still feel a quick overview of what can be expected might be of interest. North to south:
Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén & All content by Iñaki Diaz de Etura unless otherwise stated
