Cap de Ruhos

Another walk today. I was late setting off because the car wouldn't start. It was my first visit to the village of Salau since Ollie and I were walking the Pyrenean Haut Route, as then I ascended the Col de Crusous - only this time in fantastically clear conditions. When Ollie and I climbed here it was zero visibilty and raining ( I remember a long slog in knee length wet grass). In fact it's a spectacular ascent. From the col I turned right and ascended the steep ridge to Cap de Ruhos. It's a great peak with stunning views but because of it's more famous neighbours (Certescan and Mont Roig) it's often overlooked. The views were even more far reaching than from Pic de l'Har a few days ago. Aneto, Maladetta and Posets are all unobscured and even Vignemale was clearly visible to the west (80 miles away as the crow flies).



From here I continued to the nearby Pic Montagnole then took to the narrow arete, scrambling west as far as a crazy quartz pinnacle just after the Passage de Montareino - mostly on the Spanish side where it was warm in the sun, or balancing along the crest...the french side was icy as it was still in the shade. I wanted to try and descend from here directly into the Cirque d'Anglade to make a circuit but I couldn't see if there were steep cliffs barring the way (the map said yes, but it looked OK as far as I could see). With lots of frozen streams and verglas on the rocks in the cirque I decided to retrace my steps. It'a amazing that there's so much ice here as the daytime temperature in the sun is still in the twenties! At Quelebu it was 30 in the sun yesterday with a nightime temperature of 3!

The views into Spain were fantastic too. Especially looking down onto Lac Mariola.



I got back to find work underway on the house/grange opposite, like most french construction this seems to involve spraying vast quanities of concrete on everything...in this case beautiful stonework...such a shame.