High Pyrenees, 22-30 August 2019

Day three. Collado de la Paúl.

Apart from the long climb up, this was an easy day. We followed a marked path to Collado de la Plana. We left the path after the pass and traversed the slope so as not to lose too much altitude. We had to cross fields of large boulders (particularly near Collado de la Paúl), which slowed us down.

The blue line shows our track. The arrow shows direction of travel. Shift-click on the track link will open it in nakarte.me.

We repacked our backpacks after breakfast and said goodbye to Igor. We went up to spend a week in the mountains. Igor with his family went down - to the seaside. A week later we met again and spent a few days at the seaside.


Large boulders and dry trees.	This triangular peak could be seen from afar.

We climbed to a pateau by the Aigüeta stream. This would have been a great camping spot, a perfect place to pitch a tent.

The small shallow tarns were surprisingly clear and transparent.

It was very quiet, with nobody around - we have not reached the main path yet.

We are surrounded by rocks.

As we were climbing higher and higher, we could see more lakes back down. The furthest away is Ibón Grande de Batisielles, which we swam in yesterday.

Such a beautiful country of lakes! A sharp ridge here divides the valley into two, but this only becomes clear from above.

Unusual pattern on a weathered rock.

This is Collado de la Plana, we are following a well-marked path (GR 11.2).

The weathered rocks look like an engraver's playground.

We conquered our first pass and stopped for a break by Ibón de la Plana (hover the mouse over the image to see the annotation).

Our today's destination is the footsteps of Posets. We are walking slowly: it is difficult to cross fields of large boulders.

Strange shapes on the weathered rocks.

We stopped for lunch by Ibón Alto.

This is Posets, we climbed it the following day (hover the mouse over the image to see the annotation).

Looking back at Collada de la Plana (hover the mouse over the image to see the annotation). We traversed the slope from the pass so as not to lose too much altitude.

We are getting close to Posets. We walked on the large boulders on the right of the lake, and then up the snow field.

The colour of water strongly depends on the sun and the clouds. This is the same lake as on the previous photo, but it is now sunlit.

First snow! We reached 3000 m altitude.

When we got to Collado de la Paúl, the sun came out again. The summit on the left is Pico Veteranos.

As we expected, the best spot for pitching our tents was the snow field. The blue helmet by the large rock hangs from Victor's backpack. Victor is hiding behind a rock.

The snow field wasn't exactly flat, but we found two fairly horizontal spots quite far away from each other. We found a little stream on the snow field, so we did not have to melt snow to make water.