Gredos

End of summer, return to Madrid and a strong desire to get out into the hills. Where to go? Somewhere a little less populated and a little more rugged than Madrid’s sierra, yet not far enough to have to spend a whole weekend there. Gredos fits the bill perfectly time and time again. Just over two hours from Madrid with enough mountains and pueblos to keep you busy for quite a while. I’ve been going for five years and still haven’t tired of it.

Lately we’ve done long day hikes (10+ hours) by leaving Madrid Friday afternoon, camping for the night, hiking all Saturday, and returning late Saturday night. Here’s the start of the last one, a traverse from Bohoyo to the Plataforma via an ascent of La Galana.

I love those ferns. Sometimes central Spain lacks in vegetation, but those rock. Lakes also rock, and Gredos has some pretty nice looking ones, like Cinco Lagunas.

Rocks are everywhere and, once you get up high enough, there are views that don’t disappoint,

like a different angle on a peak you know well.

It’s always satisfying to admire the peak you’ve just climbed, more so if you’ve done it without any other people around.

As the sun sinks lower you get a close-up view of the local wildlife, clearly not bothered by the presence of the two-legged species.

Almanzor, take two

This year we decided to go back for Almanzor, mountain a few friends and I attempted to climb a year ago. A snowy April in the Circo de Gredos, home to Almanzor, the Laguna Grande, and other beautiful rocky pinnacles, remains one of my favorite spots to be in all of Spain. And, I repeat, it’s just over two hours from Madrid.

Anyway, this year we were quite a large group of friends of friends and ex-lovers and so on: thirteen in all who walked up to the refugio Saturday afternoon. Fewer departed for the big peak early Sunday — in more snow and less water than last year — and in all we were seven who reached the narrow Portilla del Crampón, and stood there for a while in the whipping wind and rapidly increasing fog, surveying the ice-covered rock and not finding the anchor for the rope we wanted to mount. Below, on the other side of this frighteningly narrow “pass of the crampon,” the canales oscuras (dark channels) yawned their gaping mouths. With the deteriorating weather conditions, the nasty-looking ice, and pocas ganas to spend a while mounting the whole set-up to make sure we didn’t fall down into said depths, we decided to head down the very snowy ladder we had climbed.

To be honest, I was still on a high from having overcome last year’s fear and actually making it to the pass. The view (on both sides) was enough to leave you breathless, and looking down at what we’d come up, I wasn’t sure how we had done it, or how we would descend it. But we did. I don’t know if we’ll ever make the spring snow ascent of Almanzor, but I wouldn’t be opposed to keep trying.