February frolics

[Bierzo Baggie]

I’ve a confession to make. I’m into fell running, or as they call it over here “mountain running”. Well, it’s not really your Lake District- “tearing down slippy scree slopes in the mist”-fell running….but almost. The races tend to be in summer and the climatic conditions I suspect are better (although don’t bank on it, a few years back I tried to reach a fell-run near here but couldn’t get my Peugout 205 through the snow….and it was in May!) but the basic premise of getting to the top of a peak (or various) and back down again as quickly as possible is there whatever you call it.
Anyway, this means that to bump up my weekly mileage I’ve decided to include occasional mountain walks as part of my “training”. As I see it, with the exception of a few superhuman members of the species, fell running (or Spanish mountain running) involves walking up hills and running down them, so I don’t see it as cheating.

Sunday morning. Three of us meet up to climb a couple of peaks which last summer didn’t pose any difficulty at all. It was sunny when we left Ponferrada, but by the time we’d parked the car on a windy mountain pass about an hour later the temperature was noticeably sub-zero. A couple of walkers on their way back to the only other vehicle in the vicinity stopped to talk to us. They looked equipped to climb Everest and K2 before breakfast and they warned us that we wouldn’t get up to the first peak without crampons and ice-picks. Foolishly we assumed they were exaggerating and set off.
At first the snow was soft and occasionally we’d sink into it. This was a problem for one of my fellow walkers who wasn’t wearing boots. Then as the going got steeper, the snow became harder and icy. The wind was biting and the mist obscured the spectacular views I’d enjoyed last summer. I began to understand the meaning of the expression “snow-blindness”. Any vegetation was frozen into eerie forms which pointed in the direction of the wind. I’d like to say that like Shackleton we defeated adversity and trudged on regardless to eat our sandwiches triumphantly on the mountain top. The truth is we turned back after half an hour and ate our sandwiches in the nearest bar.

Intended walk: Ancares pass (1648m) to Cuiña peak (1987m) and then Dos Hermanitos (1906m)
Actual walk: 50 minutes stumbling around in the snow followed by extended stay in nearest bar.