Words: Kade Krichko 2018-12-10 15:18:24
Aneto no es lo mismo,” scowled Juanito Oiarzabal into his glass of Patxaran. Aneto isn’t the same. Sitting in the cramped dining hall of Refugio la Renclusa, it’s hard to grasp exactly what he’s getting at. Aside from the kitchen, the old wood stove in the corner is still the only thing heating this place, accented by sweaty base layers fogging up every window. Generations of black-and-white photos line the wood-paneled walls, a living museum of straight skis and sketchy mountaineering contraptions. Ask for Wi-Fi here and you might get a two-minute call on a crackly landline (it’ll likely cost you a shot). If the midmountain shelter was the only indicator of change, I’d argue that Aneto had been perfectly unchanged for decades. But, the fact is, the sun-worn Spanish mountain guide is right. For one, the glacier that once proudly crowned the mountain has halved in size during the last century, a victim of the rapid climate change some experts say will kill it entirely by 2050. To make matters worse, the digitalized and superlative-obsessed hordes have descended on Aneto, attacking the highest peak in the Pyrenees regardless of preparation, training or safety considerations. Today we watched a couple post-holing their way to midmountain in hiking boots, heads wrapped in plastic wrap to offset the freezing wind. Tomorrow they’d push to the exposed 11,168-foot summit the same way. If you’ve seen it on Youtube, you can probably do it. It seemed a fitting mantra in these parts. The scene was more than enough to cause a little post-dinner grumbling. After all, Oiarzabal had grown up on the flanks of Aneto, nurturing a love for the mountains that would take him to the world’s three tallest peaks—Everest, K2, and Kangchenjunga—twice. Now he chips away at his third glass of homemade Basque liquor, his horrified clients looking on. We were new to Aneto, but not to the temperamental Pyrenees. Spanish photographer Javi Alonso and his compatriot Edu Carrera live in the nearby alpine valley of Val D’Aran, while French photographer Guillaume Arrietta and skier Jean Mi Gouadain make their living skiing, teaching and photographing the French Pyrenees. Both parties had stared at the peak from opposite sides of the border, waiting for their chance at Aneto. However, while the droves focused on the mountain’s looming summit, our team dreamed of the descent. Somewhere in between, I had slipped into the picture. As a guiri (Spain’s version of a gringo) unwilling to kick my mountain habit, I’d gravitated toward the Pyrenees, an intricate range often overshadowed by the towering Alps that dominate the European ski conversation. I had heard the legends of harrowing mountain crossings and big storms, but there is a magic in the unknown, and after linking up with Carrera, I was excited to get my first shot at Spain’s mysterious high alpine. “I want to show that you can access all of these areas [of Aneto],” Carrera explains. “Lots of people are racing uphill and barely skiing down. We want to actually ski this place.” Ski mountaineering has long been written into Aneto tradition, but Carrera knows that hard-charging ski descents have been few and far between. He’d studied the drool-worthy aerial photographs of couloirs, chutes and glacial wind deposits, but trip reports remained bland and straightforward. According to web posts, Aneto was for summiting, not for freeriding. Carrera and crew wanted to challenge that assumption and prove that, while the tourist herd had arrived, so too had the freeride movement. Ever since Aneto was first summited in 1842, the mountain has captivated Spanish and French mountaineers alike. But much of Aneto’s lure was its summer months, when the punishing storms blowing off the Bay of Biscay relented and glacier travel was easier on foot. Even as skiers started to make their way up Aneto at the beginning of the 20th century, the unpredictable temperature swings and fast-moving weather made the mountain a daunting undertaking. In winter, winds blow almost nonstop, but instead of moving weather down-valley, they strap clouds to the peak. Whiteout storms can last days. The upper mountain can stay hidden for weeks. Days earlier we had started our climb from the depths of the Benasque Valley, vents open and arms toasting in the early May sun. Connecting Spain with France and Andorra, the valley was once a popular route for religious pilgrims, and later, as Spain was plunged into bloody civil war, for moving contraband and escaping Republican fighters. Spain’s dictator Francisco Franco eventually capped that flow, creating a militarized border just steps from where we slap our skins on. For years, Carrera, a ski-school operator from nearby Val D’Aran, had started his morning peering at Aneto’s summit rising over his home mountains. Carrera, who lost complete function of his left arm in a motorcycle accident during his teens, had become one of the best adaptive skiers in Europe, racing in the Paralympics before switching over and competing in freeride. Last year, he and Gouadain, a fellow freeride competitor, planned to take those skills to the tallest peak in the region, until Carrera was sidelined by a late-season injury. After a year of rehab, the Spaniard is here for redemption. “This place is an emblem for all of the Pyrenees,” he says as we make our way up slushy spring snow. The going is slow, hindered by a film of sand covering the skin track. Blowing up from the Sahara, sandstorms hit the Pyrenees every spring, blanketing the mountainside in orange and adding a whole new meaning to the term “spring conditions.” With our glide shortened to uphill stepping, we finally transition on the ridgeline above Refugio la Renclusa. Skiing down to our mountain base camp at 7,020 feet, our tracks cut white snake lines into the sea of sand—corn skiing, on Mars. “The mountain is another world,” explains Antonio Lafon, who managed La Renclusa for more than four decades. “It changes every day.” Lafon has witnessed those extreme contrasts firsthand. Born and raised in the Benasque Valley, he first summited Aneto as a wiry 13-year-old. He was captivated by the mountain’s vast array of trails and natural beauty, and when his uncles suggested he work at Renclusa’s midmountain refuge two years later, he jumped at the chance. Over the next 40-plus years, he dedicated himself to the alpine refuge, acting as a mountain guide, mountain rescue and innkeeper. He’s lived through the mountain’s temper tantrums, seen its beauty, and collected its dead. “It has been my life, this mountain,” the 63-year-old says. “Aneto has always been my home.” In between running supply mules from the valley to the lodge and learning to ski, Lafon married and raised three kids from the refugio. Today, his son, David, runs the lodge, an “immense pride,” for the man who has spent almost his entire life on the mountain. It’s David that snaps our spring ski vacation back into Pyrenean reality. A storm is coming in, he says, and we’ll be lucky to see the upper mountain, much less ski it. As if on cue, clouds start barreling over the snowfields that evening, and by morning we’re in the throes of a cold windstorm. After a brief flirtation with nature’s fury, we settle in for tea and dominoes. A group of 40 amateur mountaineers has other plans, pointing their in-plastic climbing gear at the mountain, before slowly trickling back to camp, wet and battered. The next morning, we wake up to six inches of fresh and enough wind to remove any lingering food from our teeth. With the upper mountain nixed for the second day in a row, we sample the low-angle forests lining our midmountain basin. Recovering from the warm temperatures earlier in the week, the snow could be plucked right from the moody Cascade Range, heavy and wet, but stable. We lap our own protected playground, keeping our speed enough to arc angled turns and, thanks to the thick coverage, pop off stumps that were completely exposed less than a day before. Rather than sitting in the lodge for another round of dominoes, Carrera and Gouadain lead the charge, surfing through pines without another skier in sight. Stealing a half-dozen powder laps feels like a pretty damn sweet consolation prize, but as the wet starts to hit our base layers and goggles go foggy, we can’t help but wonder if we’ll ever get our shot at the alpine. We know Aneto’s winter summit push requires the perfect combination of weather and luck. Long, open snowfields and exposed glacier offer little contrast when weather moves in, and Lafon recalls rescuing vertigo-strapped mountaineers on a ridgeline and several miles off-course. For a clean, top-to-bottom run, windows are brief, at best. The stars burn overhead as we set a crisp skin track. A welcome cold pricks our nostrils and the wind that has held us captive for three days has finally exited stage south, buffing out any tracks. The steady climb of our headlamps is the only movement on the mountain, and we make quick time up to the catcher’s mitt surrounding La Renclusa. Alpenglow tickles the mountains across the valley. When the sun finally hits, it reveals a foot-deep white canvas in every direction. Cruising up through a silent sea of wind lips, it’s easy to see the magic that gripped Lafon as a teenager. It is starting to look like we are on our way to a private Spanish powder day in May. With the rest of the La Renclusa crowd finally stirring below us, we navigate a notch in the rock ridgeline, skiing a dogleg chute down to the final glacier. Each turn is fluid and fast, our contrails catching the early morning chill and exploding into thousands of tiny sunlit diamonds. But amid our dream state, reality starts oozing in. First, Alonso’s binding begin malfunctioning, then my skins give way. It’s not enough to derail the day, but enough to slow us down. The late-starting ski-touring crowd is closing in, and the upper-elevation winds have finally decided to kick into gear. It’s the latter that worries us as we make our way across the glacier. The long, steep lines that curve in and out of couloirs and over cliff bands have all the makings of a dorm-room movie poster, but wispy clouds are already collecting at their flanks. David’s weather warning echoes in our heads, and we know Aneto won’t protect our interests much longer. Lungs burn. Faces sting against the wind. We push higher. Gouadain and Alonso scramble over a knife-edge ridge to reach the summit, while the rest of us transition to downhill mode. Those ski lines will haunt our dreams for years to come, but we need to get out of here—now. Within minutes, our world is blinding white, lined by invisible, jagged and unwelcome cliff drops. Our banner day has been reduced to a series of tentative jump-turns. Eventually, we connect with our skin track, racing across the glacier. If we lose the keyhole in the clouds, our problems will be way worse than a couple of missed turns. Despite the growing storm, a lemming line of people is still marching up and into the white abyss. Summit or bust. Barely able to follow the fading skin track, we catch our mark in the nick of time. Climbing through the final rock crux, we pop back into the 1,500-foot bowl emptying out at La Renclusa. The whiteout temporarily blocked by a ridge, we finally get a taste of Aneto’s freeski bounty. One by one, we pin our way through a series of chutes, slashing wide airplane turns into an endless apron. Carrera relishes the speed, a rare chance for him to combine his alpine pedigree with the technicalities of the big mountain. The pitch lessens as La Renclusa comes into view, and for 750 feet we share three languages of hoots and hollers, party shredding May powder in the high Pyrenees. It’s bittersweet. This was the skiing we’d pinned our hopes on, but with storms barreling down on us, our moment was heart-achingly brief. Still, it felt good to score some tactile solace for turning back to ski another day. Finally crashing over the final rock barrier, the storm sweeps down the basin. Grabbing our gear from the hut, we bid farewell to David and his team of mountain sentinels, and push toward our valley reality. Over four days, the Pyrenees’ pinnacle had played the ultimate temptress. In the end, she didn’t give us much, but she gave us enough to start thinking about next year. After all, those lines aren’t going to ski themselves. Photo Caption: The skiers head straight to the summit on Pico Aneto, Aragon, Spain. Photo: Guillame Arrieta
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