Across the Pyrenees on the High route and further on in the Cantabrian Mountains- Summary and Conclusions

 

69 Tage, 1.363 km, 79.990 meters ascent

In 2024 I visited the Pyrenees for the third time and must say, that they are still the mountains in Europe, I love most, although for sure Alps, Carpathians and smaller ranges have their advantages as well. Why is that? For me the Pyrenees feel wilder, with less roads, ski areas and towns. Although not as large as the Alps, these are real high mountains, with many peaks above 3000 metres, and snow covered passes even in July. The landscape is very beautiful with thousands of alpine lakes, unique flower-covered pastures and quite pristine forests. Most trails are small footpaths, only quite seldom, walking is on gravel roads. The HRP which we followed mostly, has the reputation of being tough. Indeed almost every day there is the need to do big ascents. But contrary to the belief of some hikers, nearly everything is on marked trails which are generally good to follow. We almost always camped and didn't use the many mountain huts, which was perfect for us, as we love the immersion in nature, that only wild camping allows. Our largest stretch without resupply was 11 days, but if one wants to shorten that, there is often the possibility to descend to a village. Another big advantage of the Pyrenees is, that the summer weather is most of the time quite nice. Although we mostly stayed on the HRP, we did some variations, like in the remote Arriège mountains as an alternative to the more popular Andorra, across the Aneto Massiv, and especially great, a crossing of spectacular Ordeasa Nationalpark, which added a kind of "Grand Canyon" experience to our hike. As we wanted to hike longer than the about 6 weeks on the HRP, we walked further west. For this the website of french long distance hiker Caminaire, was a very good source of information as he stitched together different hiking trails and even short off-trail stretches.  

The mountains of the Basque country are lower, but the huge beech forests and open ridges which allow for many views were a big reward. While we found some areas of the Pyrenees quite popular with hikers in summer, there we had the hills mostly to ourselves. The lush green landscape often covered in fog is something one wouldn't expect in sunny Spain. 

When reaching the Picos de Europa we entered high mountains again. Although not very large in size these are beautiful limestone mountains with very deep valleys and steep, rocky outcrops. After the Picos, the Cantabrian Mountains again are a bit lower and less spectacular, but very remote with bears and wolves living in the forests. 

Overall the prolongation of our pyrenean hike added different dimensions to our hiking experience and we found it worthwhile. 

Finally some statistics: Our average distance was just 20 km/ day, which was mostly due to the large altitude differences. Our average ascent was 1176 meters ascent per day, while 2101 meters was the maximum. We only had one full rest day and our maximum distance was 34 kilometres per day. While we mostly wild camped, we had 5 nights in hotels, while resupplying in the valleys. For our journey to and from the mountains we used long distance busses, which were quite cheap.