Day 5 - Sallent to Sandinies

From Punta del Pacino - looking over the valley to where we walked 2
days ago

This was another great day of walking. It felt a bit wilder than the other walks we had done this week. I'm not sure why. It was another long day, 18km and 1000m of ascent, not insignificant after such a massive day the day before. We had seen the first part of this day when we were coming in from Panticosa. So we knew we were going pretty sharply up through a forest at the start, before the first ascent of the day. This one was really quite easy, probably the easiest ascent of the week. It just came after a really long slog to the saddle.

Looking towards we we walked yesterday - up the valley in the middle

After the final ascent of the day - happy to be on flat ground

We started at about 1200m in Panticosa and then had to get up to 1800m in just a couple of kilometres, so a pretty steep start. The views from the top were definitely worth it though. We could see back to where we had been walking both yesterday and the day before that. It's always slightly satisfying to see the mountains and ridges you have scaled before to get some idea of just how hard it looks from a distance. And let me tell you, it didn't look easy. The first ascent was 1965m, it was steep at the start, but overall nothing challenging. It was then a bit of a descent to a lake and yet another dam, not sure why there are so many dams. It's also strange to think that the state we were in, Aragon, is meant to be known for it's drought, and yet we had just spent a week constantly surrounded by lakes, dams and rivers. Perhaps that's why the rest of the state is so dry, they aren't letting the water flow south to it.

Yet another dam - surrounded by great mountains

Crossing the dam we came across a couple of mountain bikers. One of them was a young girl of about 10, it's nice to see adults getting their kids out, especially into such challenging terrain. I mean parts of this walk were just made for bikes, but it was pretty steep. And this section where we passed them was a bit of a cliff face, so they had to really just carry their bikes up it. Still if this was Australia I imagine the cyclists would have been completely banned from this trail, so it was nice to see that's not the case in the rest of the world, ie cyclists aren't a hunted species everywhere.

The view towards the dam, the second ascent is to the left in the mid-ground.
The one that just looks like a rocky outcrop - we climbed that. 

After lunching in the shade of an abandoned house it was up to another saddle. This abandoned house was pretty weird, it was completely burnt out, but nothing else was burnt around it, and it was miles from civilisation, at the very end of a dirt road with nothing around it. It made me wonder who would live there and what caused the fire. Perhaps it was an insurance scam, maybe it got to them after awhile, living so far from everything, but who else is going to want to buy the place.

Looking down from halfway up the climb - there is a
path of sorts in there, but it's a long fall if you slipped

The next section of the walk was pretty tricky, there was no path, we could see very clearly where we wanted to go, it's just that this section of the ground was full of steep gullies and ridges which would lead to a dead end - where you either had to go down and up a very steep gully, or turn around and try to find another way through. It was a very strange little section. After navigating it we made it up to another saddle, where we could head up Punta de la Cochata. I have to say I wasn't that keen to head up, it was incredibly steep. It looked almost like a cliff. It wasn't very long, thankfully, but I just didn't want to end up stuck halfway up not being able to go further up or getting down.

But Dave started off the climb. I was surprised at this since he doesn't have a good head for heights, but he attacked it. Thing is, he could only get about halfway up and then he started to feel it. It was hands and feet kind of stuff, like climbing a ladder, but with much looser footing and the prospect of a fall onto sharp rocks. Luckily it wasn't windy or raining. But halfway up it didn't look like it was going to get any worse, certainly not any better, but at least no worse. So I was keen to keep going whereas Dave wanted to turn around. We managed to get to the top, I like to think it was a team effort. Definitely the scariest climb I've done. My legs were shaking when we got back to flat ground, and there was a very short period of hyperventilating, but other than that, all good :).

Dave at the base of Punta de la Cochata

After recovering from this climb there was another tricky navigational section, mainly because the notes gave everything in terms of trees, stuff like, at the rowan tree turn left, then skirt around some box trees before passing a juniper bush. Problem is I have no idea what any of those trees look like, and since there wasn't much of a path you kind of needed to know what they were to stay on track. Still I was pretty proud of us, since we just followed the map instead and we managed to come out right where we were supposed to, even without any directions.

And that was pretty much it for our walking in Spain, there was one more day, but we just smashed that out in 3 hours or so. I think it was 14km or something, piece of cake after the distances we had been putting in. I was certainly sore though.

I do like the walking in Spain, the people are friendly, and seem to like the outdoors too, the weather is fantastic, and the trails aren't too crowded. What's not to like? I just need to learn a bit of Spanish I think.