Countdown to Picos

[Bierzo Baggie]

3. The strangest mountain refuge in Europe.
Once upon a time I went walking in the Picos. Well, I went cycling actually, but I ended up running out of road, ditching the bike and discovering some of the mountains I’ll revisit in just over a week’s time. Almost by accident I came across the strangest mountain refuge I’d ever seen. From a distance it looked like some sort of space capsule beamed down onto an inaccessible moonscape and encased in a base of pink marshmallow concrete. There was this grizzly fellow who looked about 50 (but was probably younger) selling water outside at extortionate prices. It was a hot day and he was doing a brisk trade amongst the walkers who had strayed this far and had discovered that there were very few springs up here.

Later I discovered that the refuge, “cabaña veronica”, was in fact the gun turret of an American aircraft carrier scrapped in Bilbao and purchased by the Spanish mountaineering federation. It had been carried up to this inhospitable place piece by piece on the back of a horse called “blondie”. The grizzly fellow I’d seen was Mariano, the self appointed guardian of the customized gun turret and the highest based refuge warden in Spain in what is the smallest refuge (it admits 4 at a squeeze).

Mariano rarely descended to the valleys below and lived a spartan existence in this barren, treeless world of snow, ice and rocks between 1983 and 2007. There can’t be many people in Europe living permanently above 2300 metres of altitude and I’d hazard a guess that there’s nobody living at this altitude all by themselves.

Perhaps Mariano was a true hermit of our age, a modern day version of the early Christian monks of the Tebaida Berciana. What drove him to live in this way? Escapism? An excess of existential ponderings? Some personal tragedy? ..Whatever the reasons it seemed like a workable compromise for the social animal that we are, periods of absolute solitude followed by plenty of company as walkers passed through during the day or when bad weather forced a group of mountaineers to shelter in the gun turret overnight. Let’s call it “splendid isolation” without going the “Monty Python- 18 years down a hole/ under a juniper bush” full hog. He also provided an important liason between stricken climbers and mountain rescue.

Last summer Mariano descended from Cabaña veronica and this time for good. At least the window on his hospital ward offer views towards his beloved Picos. Cancer spares no-one and even the sterile atmosphere of high altitude offered no hiding place. Not even for Mariano.

We’ll be passing just north of cabaña veronica in the Urrieles stage of the Picos event.