We left Estanc Llong with a group of women, one of whom was a Canadian expat who spoke to us in English. She invited us to hike down the mountain with them where we grabbed a 4×4 to the opening of the trail to Ventosa i Calvell. Was it cheating? We didn’t think so. If the park ranger told us to take the shortcut to Blanc, we can take the shortcut to Ventosa. The hike was almost three hours from the visitors’ station up to mountains anyway. On our sixth day, we just wanted to finish our trek and make our way back to Barcelona.
After we separated from the women, the hike to Ventosa was chilly but pleasant. When we made it to the refuge, we saw snow on the mountains. We had the entire afternoon to rest, and we knew we needed it because the next day involved trekking back to our starting point at Restanca, going down the mountain, and making the 1pm bus back to Barcelona.
Video diary, day 6: Hiking to Ventosa i Calvell, snow in September
The German couple at Colomina decided not to go ahead to Estanc Llong on our fifth day. It was simply raining too much. We’ve gone so far even after our first setback, we decided to go for it after breakfast. Visibility was at zero and we had large rocks to cross. The rain erased the paths. We followed as much as we can see until we reached a fork on the trail. We spent at least three hours trying both ways and retracing our steps. It was hard to swallow and admit that we were lost for the second time during our hike.
We looked around us to see where we can sleep as soon as it got dark. There were no trees and no crevices in the rocks. We had a sleeping bag, but it was also wet because of the rain. As soon as we stopped on our tracks, we shook and froze–we knew we had to keep walking.
Video diary, day 5: Arriving at Estanc Llong after getting lost for eight hours
Back in Colomina, another young German couple just came from Estanc Llong. We remembered them telling us that the refuge was nestled among tall trees. Since we’ve tried every which way to get out of the mountains, we followed the Dr.’s instinct and walked along the trees, praying under our breaths that our next turn would be rewarded with a view of the refuge.
I cried as soon as I saw the roof of the refuge. We really thought that we had to sleep in the rain out in the mountains. There was a smaller group already preparing for dinner when we walked in. We were so relieved to see other people again. During dinner, the only English-speaking hiker told us she was an expat from Canada. She invited us to hike down the mountain with her group, where we would catch another 4×4 with them and we would continue to our next stop, Ventosa i Calvell.
