After an amazing start to our weekend (and a long 7 hour hike), we decided to take it a bit easy on Sunday with a short climb - only 4 hours up and back. Our destination? Mount Oroel - the namesake for our lovely hotel in Jaca. Thanks to the time change, our bodies were all confused and tired from the night before and somehow we woke up at 7am and decided to take advantage of our before-alarm-clock awakening and head out to hopefully get some sun before it clouded up in the afternoon.
The winding road out of town and up half of the mountain was shrouded in fog which hovered over the trees making thier fall colors barely visible. The hike started at a lookout point that had a restaurant/café that the Tourist Office handout said was 'practically always open'. Well, when we arrived at like 8am, it wasn't open. Just saying. We snapped a few shots of the snow-capped Pyrenees in the distance in case it was cloudy by time we reached the top and headed up.
A rather boring hike - a zigzagging path that slowly inclined and didn't provide much in the way of picturesque scenery, we were happy that our morning start time had made us one of the few groups on the mountain at that hour. Since it is quite an easy hike, it is frequented by lots of tourists, families, picnic groups and such in the afternoon, all of which we kind of wanted to avoid. Although the 2 hour climb wasn't incredible, the view when we reached the topped was worth it...and did measure up to the Tourist Office's description. Lucky enough to have a high-cloudy day, we could see miles and miles of Pyrenees and in between fog batches, little mountain villages in the valley. Against the blue sky the view was priceless and we took some personal time each to take it in. Having never seen the Pyrenees before this trip, I was elated to be able to see the majestic peaks in full panorama form. We even tried to capture the feeling of vast grandness with a panoramic shot, but as anyone who's ever been to a wide open space like this knows, a photo just can't translate the chills you get in the moment.
With growling tummies, the time difference made itself glaringly obvious again as we munched on our sanwiches for a 10:30am 'lunch'. Practically alone at the top, we passed tons of people on our descent and were pleased with our early start - like we had had the peak to ourselves, even if just for an instant.
Two hikes under our belt and freshly showered, we decided to head out and see the town of Jaca. Known as a town for 'white sports' (do we call skiing, snowboarding, snowshoeing, etc that or is that a direct translation from my Spanish??) the town was everything you would hope for from a quaint ski village - steep roofs, beautiful woodwork, cobblestone streets boasting glamourous winter clothes shops, bakeries with fresh pastry smells wafting out the front doors and of course beautiful people in athletic clothes (but we decided half of them probably hadn't even gone hiking haha). With a citadel from the 16th century, a medieval church that includes scaling towers, and lots of little bars with new pintxos to try, we were happy campers wandering around the little town until we puttered out and turned in early.
The next morning we set off on our final hike of the trip - a big one - and headed to France to start it off. We found a small parking lot on the map and headed across the border and laced up our hiking shoes (new ones for me - thanks to Joseba's nice birthday present to me!) to march onto Ibón de Estanés (Estanes Lake). Joseba showed off his rather good high-school French when he reaffirmed with another hiker that we were on the correct path to the Lake. Flea fly flew flaw flou it sounded like to me, but in fact yes we were going in the right direction. The two hours we walked until we reached the lake were stunning - again fall colors at thier best, and this time with the peaks right alongside us as we walked. And again, we didn't see a soul until we reached the Lake, which glimmered in the sun and was surrounded by the peaks on one side, low-lying grass-covered hills to the other and a green valley to the front.



Surrounded by peaks peaks and more peaks, we figured out that the large valley curved around about a mile in and that fog was billowing from the bend. Intrigued, we headed there to try and catch a view of these special sarrios charging down the rocks. Sarrios are a special type of goat-antelope animal that are native to European mountains. Into the fog and out the other side, the wind blew hard in our faces but we kept on. About an hour of walking and with still no glimpse of this animal that we were starting to question if even existed, we chomped down a chicken empanada to give us strength for our turn-around and hike back out of this brutal valley.

Crossing through the valley again and back down the rocky mountainside past the Lake and speed-walking down the foresty path to the car, we made it with still lots of daylight (our major fear). At the start of the hike, when we had stopped worrying about time and arriving, we noted the little river we had crossed over early that morning and decided our feet deserved a cool-down, of the freezing river type. We stripped off our hiking boots and socks to let our feet breath a bit of fresh Pyrenee air before we dipped them in the stream. Talk about cold! Joseba proceeded to stand up in the water and wince, to which of course I laughed. Not pleased by my mocking, he dared me to walk across the whole stream without showing any pain on my face. I accepted and failed miserably.
I easily made it across the stream - it was only about 10 steps - but the sheer temperature of it made it impossible not to clench your teeth. Joseba snapped some pics while I did it and then decided he wanted some pics of himself doing the same, but I refused to cross the river again to come get the camera, so the poor boy crossed it twice! Using the sports setting, I managed to get every frame of his walk and boy was he cocky - acting like it didn't hurt at all! But his last pictures show the pain in his face! Ha! An unusual way to end a hike, we made our feet even happier when we sat down in the car and headed back for our last Jaca night.


We headed back the next morning in the rain - shocked that we had lucked out with the weather. Besides the 20 minutes of mist we had on our first day, we had perfect weather for a whole 4-day weekend and the exact day that we were leaving it decided to pour buckets! As we pulled out of town and headed home, I watched the fall colors through the wet window, remembering all the beautiful scenes I had the chance to see this beautiful trip.
Muxu!
Amanda
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