The Great Outdoors Spring 2019

This was the route that had captured my

imagination: the complete Sierra Nevada

range, in a week – a red rag to a Spanish bull

lazily suck moisture from their spines. It’s
awkward going, but alien and spectacular.
We are traversing uninished topographic
business, riding the jagged rim of a huge
north-facing escarpment whose snowmelt
feeds the delta of the Moorish city of
Granada and its surrounding pueblos.
I’m at breaking point on the inal big
climb of the day, a desiccated mess. It’s a bit
like Helvellyn on the top, reckons Mick, in
between my melodramas. Later still, we scan
the horizon for blind, shallow gullies, one of
which eventually produces a spring, before
inally pitching at dusk as the cloud swims
up from the sea. Fetching water entails a
100m descent, but any is better than none.
he following day, and it is Mick’s turn to
sufer. My body seems to have remembered
how to backpack, thankfully. We roll with

the punches together, up and down, all the

time travelling west. he character of our

mesa para dos changes, becoming ever more

like the tor-strewn plateau of the eastern

Cairngorms, but at twice the altitude.

Brittle, sandy rock shimmers in the heat

haze, lime green dwarf cactus perches on

top. We bypass a large herd of goats and

spy the irst of many Ibex. We make good

time and at the Puerto de Trevelez, where

the desert section ends and the 3,000m tops

begin, we decide to push on, making for

a magniicent camp in a high coire, at the

Laguna de Juntillas.

As the route swings south-west to follow

the spine of the range, journeying between

camps at the head of rivers now becomes

the pattern for the remainder of the traverse.

Our last task before sleep is to pack away our

food into Tupperware boxes, weigh them

with rocks and station them away from the

tents, overlooked by an ultrasonic motion

sensor to deter determined critters that

we’re told will tear through tents. his is the

Hoyo del Zorro – the place of the fox.

Light and sound

he next two days are a blur of

uncharacteristically bad weather and

navigational near-misses. Early next

morning the ridge thins to a blocky

talus that reminds us of the Carn Mor

Dearg arête and absorbs our energies

and attention, before a prolonged hail

storm trashes our holiday mood. Hungry,

shivering and soaked through, we teeter

along, on and of the ridge, catch a brief

glimpse of the irst and possibly the

The Great Outdoors Spring 2019 65