Port d'Urets and Pic Mauberme

Pic Mauberme highest peak in the Couserans

Cabane d'Urets with a foreshortened view of the Port (left) and Mauberme (right)

After failing to drum up anyone to come to Pico Aneto (the Pyrenees highest peak at 3404m) for a ski tour, I decided I would try to the climb the highest peak in the Couserans instead - Pic Mauberme 2880m. Whilst Aneto is 1500m above the nearest road, Mauberme is 1960m so it's a Pyrenees giant alright.

I left late Friday and in about 2hrs 30 had reached the Cabane d'Urets at 1947m. A one room unmanned refuge (though currently being exanded to two rooms - whoopee!). Alas there were no mattresses and though I had taken my sleeping bag I hadn't taken a thermarest, so a very crap nights sleep followed (in fact 'sleep' doesn't belong in that sentence as there wasn't any - possibly the worst night's rest since the infamous bivvy below a dripping rock below Pic Morterasch in the Italian Alps with Andy Matthews).

I set off at 8.30 next morning for the Port d'Urets, from where I hoped to cross into Spain traverse behind the summit cone of the mountain and finish up a short couloir to the summit. Although I had taken ice axe, crampons and snow shoes, the latter were of no use today. It was about 1500 ft to the Port and the snow quickly got thicker to the point where it was impossible to discern the summer path. The snow was hugely changeable - one step it was like concrete, the next unconsolidated powder, then with a crust, then windslab and lots of sastrugi - which made the going very difficult. To reach the Port I had to climb short steep steps and traverse increasingly steep slopes (40-45 degrees at the end) on unstable snow above large cliffs. All in all very mentally trying when soloing. The final slope just 20m below the Port and leading to seemingly easy ground was the most exposed of all and composed of windslab seemingly unbonded to the ground below. It creaked and dropped as I trod over it (the latest avalanche notices warn of weak windslab over unconsolidated snow on NE steep facing slopes close to the frontier crests)...enough was enough, I bid a delicate retreat. Frustrating to be so close and yet so far - but better to be alive!

The final rise to the Port, the route traverses the upper part of the highest snow slope before gaining the easier ground of the banked out path leading to the Port

The last section of steep snow leading to the Port. At the bottom of the picture my first aborted attempt to mount the slab, at the top my second successful attempt, but after about 50m I decided enough was enough.

Looking back to the Cabane on the descent