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Friday 16 September 2022: Trek day 5 - Soto de Valdeón (850m) to Collado Jermoso (2064m)
I woke to the sound of owl hoots and cow bells. And clouds.
Breakfast in the bar at La Casa Vieja en Valdeón, then back on the road to Posada de Valdeón for supplies (bread & cheese), and on to Cordiñanes. Here we left the road and embarked upon the trail (PNPE 16) that would lead us to lovely Collado Jermoso, high up in the Central Massif.
It was an 'exciting' route: straightforward at first, and then the trail (La Rienda) narrowed and hugged the cliff face, chains providing secure hand holds as the path wound up and down and up, eventually levelling off (relatively) and entering woodland. Spiders webs glistened in the cloud dew, but today the sun was getting the better of the clouds, burning them off the mountainsides as we watched.
The woods gave way to a high valley (Vega Sotín) and at the compass-point boulder we turned left and embarked upon a zig zag climb up to the narrow ridge (Collado Solano?) where we lunched, and Manu's free climbing gave us heart failure.
The afternoon provided a whole other level of 'excitement': a narrow trail over exposed scree slopes, long drops thankfully hidden in cloud, culminating in a Grade 3 scramble up Argallo Congosto. "Difficulty High" did not lie, but we all emerged out of the final gully and onto Collado Jermoso's gentle grasslands on a high.
We treated ourselves to beers and crisps to celebrate, sat at one of the refugio's picnic tables soaking up the views and the late afternoon sunshine while Alfonso and Manu headed off for some proper climbing, thoughtfully keeping out of sight.
Fab dinner inside the warm, snug and busy refugio - my favourite one by a long way - then out for a technicolour sunset looking out over the Picos, and a stunning cloud inversion.
Magical and mystical.
A fabulous day.
Overnight: Refugio Diego Mella / Collado Jermoso
Read more on Sparkly Trainers: Picos de Europa - El Anillo Extrem(e) with Alfonso & Manu.
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Pico Place is a 32-unit affordable housing apartment building of 2- and 3-bedroom family units. Construction for the project, located in Santa Monica California, begins this spring. Client: Community Corporation of Santa Monica.
A derradeira foto da minha visita ao pico sacro nun día no que se ten falado muito desta formación marmórea.
Quen sabe se as lendas terán algo de certo.
Un saúdo
Pico de Gallo is our tripod (three-legged) dog. We adopted her a few weeks after she had her back right leg amputated at the humane society...by my veterinarian husband! We didn't know we'd end up taking her home when he did the surgery. :)
Pico El Águila is the highest point in the Venezuelan Andes highway. It´s a 4118 meters over the sea level peak, in the National Park "Sierra de la Culata". The sight is really impressive, and the silence is also very nice. There is a place in the top of this peak where you can drink hot chocolate, or buy jackets and others. Rarely this peak conserves snow on it, but possibly in August and January every year (the snow time on the Venezuelan Andes Peaks).