On the journey through France he’d bombarded me with questions about the mountains, their routes and grades. He wanted to know not just the highest peaks but the most interesting, their location, their history, which ones I’d climbed, what my plans were. Now we were at the lakeside, black and dreary on this grey, damp morning, he demanded to know where were these Enchanted Mountains I’d banged on about.
‘This way,’ I said, and wandered towards pinewoods grouped below the unseen twin peaks that were icons of the district. The Enchanted Mountains were precisely that – Els Encantats, the Sierra de los Encantados. Erring shepherds turned to stone, their ankles at last came into view as we emerged from the dripping trees. A tongue of old snow fanned out below the central gully, and as we stood for a moment peering through the gloom, two young izard picked their way across it before disappearing in the mist.
‘Might as well take a look,’ he said. ‘We’ve brought the rope this far; it’d be daft not to use it.’ And with that he set off, heading for the dark underside of the clouds.
This had not been on my agenda for a first climb with a complete stranger. I’d pictured scrambling on sun-bathed crags, eyeing each other up, wondering whether we’d achieve anything or fall out on Day One. But rain or no rain, Hugh clearly had other ideas. He was here to climb mountains, seen or unseen.
Bemused, I ran after him, wondering what was going through his mind. Unless he knew something of which I was unaware, how could he possibly decide to climb a mountain he’d never seen, could not see, and had no idea where any existing route might go? I at least had gazed on these impressive pillars before, but had never been close enough to even touch rock, let alone make an attempt to climb them. Now it seemed as though we’d be having a crack at them, for it was obvious that Hugh was uninterested in just peering into falling rain and gently swirling mist. Simply prospecting a route would not be enough for him; we were about to climb.
By reputation the Gran Encantat, the higher of the two summits, is not unduly difficult, and even by Pyrenean standards is of no great height, but it offers something like 800m of ascent, and for a first attempt it would at least be helpful to see what we were doing and where we were going. There was little to be seen, but we kicked our way up the snow slope anyway and stood momentarily at the foot of the gully. It looked steep to me, but that didn’t impress Hugh. Letting more steam out of his jacket, he gestured at the fist-sized stones embedded in the snow, lowered his rucksack and pulled on his helmet. We roped up without discussion, and with a grunt which I interpreted as meaning: ‘Mind if I lead?’ he set off into the gloom.
Broken rock afforded plenty of holds as we progressed up the right-hand side of the gully, yet broken rock is broken rock, and some came my way, whizzing past in a shower of stones. Despite the occasional bombardment, and despite seeing nothing beyond vague shapes, my confidence grew as we surged our way through the clammy mist. Rain was no longer falling, but moisture was all around us. The air was damp; the slabs we climbed were cold and wet; water spilled over tiny ledges and dripped from unseen projections. Some grooves retained ice from last winter, and in one place we were forced to burrow through a water-carved tunnel. Hugh went first, his back pressed against the rock, knees tight against a tube of ice. Every sound echoed, and we inhabited worlds of our own. Time lost all meaning as we lost contact with the tongue of snow, the lake and that other world down there.
‘Down there’ could have been fifty or five hundred metres. If Hugh or I disturbed a stone it bounced and clattered – then nothing but silence. We could gauge nothing from that.
Rain returned, then fell as snow. Light flakes dusted the route with fine powder. Above us were more broken slabs, a ledge or two, a cleft, an overhang we could turn without trouble. We rarely spoke, for there was nothing to say. Hugh climbed smoothly. He was in his element – strong, safe and confident – and I discovered that he’d been running climbing courses for several years in north Wales. Although he’d never been to the Pyrenees before, it was as though this were his home territory; he understood rock and all its subtleties, Spanish or Welsh. No wonder he looked happy as we arrived at the Enforcadura, the top of the gully at a sniff under 2700m. We might have seen nothing yet, and there was little to see above us, but imagination took over.
Saying nothing about the more challenging alternative of the Petit Encantat, I nodded to the right. ‘Gran Encantat,’ I said. ‘Another fifty metres and we’re there.’ For some reason that defeats my memory, we unroped. Hugh coiled it and fitted it to his rucksack.
‘D’you mind?’ he asked, nodding at the snow-dusted rock.
‘Be my guest.’
After a moment’s examination he blew on his fingers, chose a line and started up the right-hand slabs, leaving me to follow his lead once more. I was content with that, for he had seldom wavered in his route finding, and the calm deliberation employed on rock he’d never seen before was a joy to watch.
The route he chose may not have been the ‘normal’ route. Who knows – or cares? He climbed straight up for several metres, then strayed to the right, moving onto what felt like exposed terrain, and as I moved after him the air quickened around me; a puff of wind whipped across my face and shredded the clouds. I glanced down, and for the first time that day I had a view – onto the lake of Sant Maurici, 800m below my feet.
Had we not been cocooned in mist all morning, had we been able to see what we were climbing and what was beneath us, had we grown used to a scene of distant peaks and lakes and pinewoods below, the sight of Sant Maurici looking no bigger than a puddle would not have come as such a shock. But none of those things had belonged to our climb, and for a moment I was unnerved.