Ari and I headed away towards Andorra and the Pyrenees for a long weekend. Actually it was a normal length weekend but it felt longer due to being some place else. We worked Friday from our picturesque little stone Air BnB. On Saturday we left early to do a klettersteig, Via Ferrada de la Roca Nareida, about half an hour’s drive towards Andorra. It was hot, very hot. Very, very hot. Actually this was the theme of the entire weekend. We started with a surprisingly tough K3 section. It was shady but hot. Did I mention something about the heat? We finished the first section of the route and spent a while deliberating about starting the next section which was supposed to be K4 and therefore more difficult. We decided to try it and got moving. It turned out to be fine and we spent the next couple of hours climbing steep walls, crossing bridges, and climbing an interesting spiral ladder. Finally we reached the top of the wall and emerged into direct sunlight. The route down was even hotter and we were well and truly over it by the time we met Anaïs down at the car park. We walked down to the river and recovered under a tree and dipped in the river.
Anaïs stayed the night with us and we had a BBQ in the evening outside in the heat. It was a nice evening of delicious food and the heat turned into a nice warmth after about 7:30pm.
On Sunday we did another klettersteig, Serra de les Canals. It was a little shorter but just as warm. This time I brought a large 1.5 L bottle of ice with me. It melted rapidly as we climbed but stayed cold and refreshing. The ferrata was fairly easy but did involve climbing straight up a high wall to the summit, which definitely had the feeling of exposure about it. We had a nice view from the summit cross on the ridge down to the hyrdo lake below and along the road leading to Andorra. We could see roughly where we’d climbed the day before. We drove back to Barcelona in the evening.
