Wandering the Pyrenees

The cliche is that a picture is worth a thousand words, and I realize that I've been using pictures to speak for me as of late. Though my camera will never be able to capture the majesty of the mountains that surround me, especially after the tumble it took onto ice two years ago, I've found that I am at a loss for words these days. I suspect I can blame this partly on being overwhelmed by all the incredible things I've seen while traveling. Sometimes, I look back through my pictures of Georgia and think, "I did that? Really?" It's a bizarre feeling, looking at pictures of the things I've done and seen and realizing, "Hey, I fucking spent a week in Istanbul! I'm living Southern France. What the heck!"

The weekend before last we had a huge snowstorm. Alright, huge for a Texan like me. Three full days of snow and a total of probably 10 inches or more over the course of those three days. (Anyone from above the Mason-Dixon Line is laughing themselves silly when they read this.) To me, though, it was unbelievable. I still hold that snow is magic, no matter what people tell me otherwise. We played in the snow and made snow angels, snowmen and took a sled to the hill in the yard. All in all, a good time. But I was most excited to go hiking as soon as the snow let up and the sun came out.

This is the view if you just walk  for a minute or two up the road by my house.

The road to Villeneuve d'Olmes from my house.

One of the things that I learned when I first started taking walks/hikes is that it doesn't matter if you walk on the shoulder or on the road, people will do their best to avoid you while driving. Even on tiny one lane roads in the middle of nowhere Scotland, even on winding mountain roads in Southern France. You can tell they have a respect and understanding of hikers and bicyclists. When cars came up behind me while I was hiking the road, I always got onto the shoulder (even in snow up to mid-calf as shown above), but they also always slowed down and moved over to avoid me. In America, I never felt that safe. I always had half my mind thinking about whether or not I would be able to jump out of the way in time if some jerk were to drive too quickly or too close to me while I ran on residential roads. As a runner/walker, I have come to truly appreciate the driving rules over here.

I was worried about being able to follow the trails, but no worry! The French are just as keen on wandering around in the snow as I am, apparently, because all the trails had been walked before I got there.

At this point, I was fairly confident that this road would lead me back to my village, but concerned because I was going the directly away. I still haven't figured out where exactly I walked for this hike.

Something to keep in mind while looking at these pictures, is that most of the hikes I did before last Saturday involved a bit of bloodshed. I've mentioned the blisters that my hiking boots gave me, but the level of horror that those boots caused my feet was amazing. I would normally just stop wearing shoes that caused pain, but when I left my tennis shoes in Scotland (epic blonde moment), I severely limited my options for hiking footwear. For the snowy hikes, I used Marie's boots which were two sizes too small, but were meant for snow. The hike pictured below was the last of my hikes until I bought new shoes.

Villeneuve d'Olmes. The clouds in the upper left are covering Mont d'Olmes, the closest ski slope to where I live.

The trail to Montferrier, about 4 k away from Villeneuve.

The trail from Villeneuve to Montferrier was actually one of my favorites, so far. It followed the river for most of the way and it was almost continuously covered by a canopy of trees. Also, for some reason there was significantly more snow along this trail than any other, and at one point I had to sort of hop from footprint to footprint because the snow was knee-deep and I didn't want it to get into my boots. At the end of the path I was feeling a little cocky about my ability to tell how deep the snow was by the boot prints of the person who'd walked before me. Well, as usual befalls me when I get cocky, I misjudged a bootprint and ended up thigh deep in snow right at the edge of the creek. Oops! I pulled myself out, but not before being completely covered in a thin layer of snow, because of course I'd tipped over as soon as my leg went out from under me. Luckily, no one was around to witness my less-than-graceful discovery of the bank of the creek.

When I got back from that hike, my blisters were paining me a bit so I went upstairs to ask for a band-aid. I was wearing only socks with bloodstains over the Achilles tendon. What I didn't realize, was that the blood had spread down to soak my entire right foot so as I was walking around upstairs to ask for band-aids, I was making bloody footprints all over. I went into my room, oblivious, only to hear Marie exclaim and point them out to me. Needless to say, I haven't worn those boots since. In fact, I took a three day hiatus from shoes or socks and let my feet heel as much as I could. We went to Foix last Saturday and I bought some hiking shoes. It took me a few weeks of pain, but I hope I've finally learned my lesson about wandering around with bloody gashes in my heels. 

I haven't been doing a lot of hikes lately, instead I've been going on sunrise runs. Unfortunately, running with a camera is more difficult than it seems so I haven't had a lot of picture-taking opportunities. At some point in the next two weeks I'm going to do a full day hike to Montsegur and one to Mont Fourcat. Plans, plans, plans. We all know they never work out the way we think they will. Anyway, hopefully I'll get a few more good hikes in before I fly to Poland.