Ordesa-Perdido (Pyrenees) 2025
Here we are in the Pyrenees again, for the first time since 2019! This time we went to the Ordesa-Perdido National Park known for its canyons. Monte Perdido is the highest mountain in the Pyrenees after Aneto and Posets which we climbed last time. We had 7 days for the hike, and the 8th day was spent exploring the Ordesa Canyon. The trip included several day hikes. These were deliberately built in to give us an easy way to shorten the route in case of bad weather. Fortunately, the weather was kind to us.
The coloured lines show our route. The arrow indicates the direction of travel, and the "P" icon marks the parking spot.
The walking time includes all breaks and lunch.
General comments
- Route planning. While researching the area, we found out that wild camping is strictly prohibited in the Ordesa sector. Tents can only be pitched near the Goriz refuge, and this needs to be booked well in advance. When we started planning, there were no spots left. Of course, we wanted to climb Perdido, visit Breche de Roland, and walk through the Ordesa Canyon. In order to make these trips possible, we had to camp for 3 nights at the same spot by Lago de Marboré. This area is in the Pineta sector where wild camping is allowed. We did day hikes to Perdido and Breche de Roland, and then drove to the Ordesa canyon for a day hike. We could have reached Breche de Roland from the French side, but that would have required overnighting low in the valley near the Espuguettes refuge and then near the Sarradets refuge. We would have visited the famous Gavarnie cirque, but there would probably have been too many people. We had already seen the less-known but also beautiful Estaubé cirque, and decided to skip Gavarnie and instead cross back into Spain through the Tuquerouye pass. The route we took turned out to be more interesting, even though we had to camp three nights at Lago de Marboré.
- Difficulty level. The technical part matched our abilities quite well. There were several short sections of easy scrambling. We crossed the Perdido glacier; there was no need for roping up there. We only carried one 30 m rope, which we used several times: on the descent from Collado de la Munia, on the ascent/descent to the Perdido glacier, and when Lova and Yasha climbed Cilindro de Marboré. There were also technical sections on the Munia ridge, at the Tuquerouye pass, and on the approach to Breche de Roland. In all these places there were short fixed rope or chain sections, so our own rope wasn't needed.
- Walking time. We decided to wake up reasonably early during this trip, and were usually ready to start walking before 8 a.m., and on the longest day we started at 7. We moved slowly through the technical sections, so the hiking days were long, but we weren't in a hurry.
- Weather. We were extremely lucky with the weather - again! We had prepared for afternoon thunderstorms and strong winds, but the weather was perfect: no rain and no wind in 8 days! Lucky us...
- Gas. We bought it at Decathlon. We had to use CampingGaz since screw-on canisters were not available. We brought stoves for both types of canisters.
- Maps, paths, descriptions. TopoPirineos is an excellent map, although it hasn't been updated since 2020. Paths which are not labelled with technical level might require ropes. When a difficulty level is given, it is accurate. Most paths are shown very accurately. Here is a very detailed map of Aragon, but it loads very slowly. A good topographic map of Spain is here, and you can download it here. The Pyrenees are probably the only mountain region in Europe for which you can easily find route descriptions online. The most useful sources are Topopyrénées, Komando Kroketa, and Pyrénées-rando.
- People. There are quite a lot of people in the popular places and on key paths, for example when climbing Perdido. In less-visited areas there are few people, especially in the second half of the day.
- Mobile signal. (We used it to check the weather forecast.) Mobile signal was hard to find, sometimes appearing in unpredictable spots. You just need to check periodically.
- Weather forecast. We used MeteoBlue.
- Webcams are available here.
Click the "Next" arrow to see the trip report and the photos.
