The mountain and the trip

Ok, so you saw the mountain there in the last post?  Here's another look or three.

When we got up there, on Saturday night, youngest and I saw this:

Kinda dark and ominous and steep!

The mountain is called Pedraforca, (Rock fork) in the Pre-Pyrenees parts of Catalunya.

The route looked like this: We started out on the right flank there, in a paleish patch you might pick out, very nearly in the corner of the picture and we climbed up to the edge of the white rocky stuff in that finger on the right.

Then it looked like this:

And the route went pretty much straight up with a 40 meter chimney climb.  Youngest, by now, had a blister from her new boots.  We were barely a quarter of the way into the walk and this was FAR and away the easiest part, and it hadn't been that easy.  Part of the group was turning around at this point, and we did too.  We had had a lovely walk, and it was time to turn back.

When we were sailing in the Bahamas, one of the things I learned was how NOT to introduce someone to a sport.  It goes like this:  First, scare them, badly.  Second, exhaust them.  This had the fixings of both.  Cause after climbing up to the peak on the right, which is higher than the face you saw in the last picture, which I believe os the shoulder on the right there, you come down to the saddle and then go straight down that thin line in the middle.

It's filled with scree and rubble the size of car tires.  This stuff slides while you walk on it.   It slides a lot.  You have two options when approaching this,  go slowly and try to control it, or run and hope for the best.  One kid got hurt running it yesterday.  Everyone who went fell down at least once.

I decided that I would like Youngest to want to come to the mountains with me again.  She had started a conversation with me on the way up saying that she would prefer to go swimming than climbing mountains, and another stating that what she was looking forward to most was the chocolate, so although I had said to her the day before that I absolutely didn't mind if we went for the top or not, which was true, that it would be up to her whether we went on at the turn around or went back down.  In the end I made an executive decision and we went back down when the group split.

Slowly.

With a pack of other kids.

There is a refugi almost back at the cars, which is big and wide and open and has a lawn, which is as good as unheard of here is Spain, and it has a bathroom and a cafe (welcome to Europe) and we spent the afternoon there and had a delightful time.  The kids played and played and played, there was even a sprinkler, I took some photos of the people in the group and the kids, lay back in the grass and relaxed, leaned against the refugi walls and gazed at the mountain.

One of the guys in the group, who is VERY experienced, asked if I wanted to walk over and watch them coming down, which I soooo wanted to do, but Youngest was having a blast and wasn't keen....so I didn't, laid back in the grass again and had a lovely time.

Ahhhhhh.
A lovely day, and maybe Youngest will come with me again next time.