At 11,168 feet, Aneto is the highest peak in the Pyrenees and Spain’s third-highest mountain. It stands in the Spanish province of Huesca, the northernmost of all three Aragonese provinces, four miles south of the French border. Photo: Javier Alonso Words Kade Krichko “ ANETO 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 fog-ging 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. Tomor-row 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 Pyr-enees. Spanish photographer Javi Alonso and his compatriot no es lo mismo,” scowled Juanito Oiarzabal into his glass of Patxaran. 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 photograph-ing 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 mysteri-ous 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 straight-forward. 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 moun-tain 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. Aneto, Spain 047
The Ski Journal Volume 12, Issue 3: Page 47
