Presiding over the Sant Maurici lake, this vast two-peaked monolith is omnipresent in local hikes - a yardstick to measure how far you’ve walked and how high you’ve reached.
In the legend of Els Encantats, two hunters were enticed onto the mountain by the biggest chamois they’d ever seen, and then blasted by lightening for daring to mock the good villagers at mass in Sant Maurici’s chapel. Their fossilised remains, two splinters of rock, can be seen between the peaks.
Everywhere there are bleached, twisted wrecks of trees, another reminder of the dangers of lightning. With afternoon storms forecast, I didn’t aim to go far. The day had started misty and still, but seemingly from nowhere, waves of wind began searing through the crags. Suddenly the sky was an electric blue, and my hands were frozen. Clouds were surging past, and over the shoulders of Els Encantats a cumulo-nimbus was rising. Enhancing the vividness of the moment, a stunning tangerine-coloured butterfly was browsing at the shore of the Sant Maurici lake: a Scarce copper (Lycaena virgaureae).
I climbed up to a spot protected from the wind, with the whole majestic block of Els Encantats in view - from the peaks, with the doomed hunters inbetween, to the creamy-white glaciar in its belly button - a vestige of the 400m-deep glacier that once filled the Escrita valley.
I could see silver glitter racing across the Estany de Sant Maurici in the valley bottom, the water a deep turquoise compared to the dark blue of higher lakes, which lack sediments, minerals and algae. I was watching a flock of crossbills prise open pine cones but the sky beyond the great mountain was now the darkest blue - time to go.
Aiguestortes and Sant Maurici national park, Pyrenees, Trip reports | Tags: Aiguestortes and Sant Maurici national park, crossbills, Els Encantats, Lycaena virgaureae, Pyrenees, Sant Maurici lake, Scarce copper, walking in the Pyrenees|
A mountain pass is a chance to look into another world, or at least into the next valley, so with a great choice of trails heading out from the Sant Maurici lake, I decided to walk to the Port de Ratera via the Refugio d’Amitges. The map showed an interesting looking path, an alternative to the more direct jeep track.
The way was unsignposted but quite well marked by cairns, and I only strayed twice, where the path branched. After a summer in sandals, I felt clumsy in heavy boots, stumbling over the rocks and gasping from the sheer steepness.
The path wound through a knot of Mountain pines and dense alpenrose, emerging onto a small plateau. It was a resting place for a narrow river that had just finished cascading down a cliff. It now paused to meander peacefully among grass and flowers, before resuming its turbulent course, crashing down into the Ratera lake, as the Cascada de la Ratera.
It was an arcadian scene at an altitude of 2,200 m. The water was crystal clear. Orange fritillaries floated among heather and harebells still glistening with rain drops after last night’s storm. The distant roar from the waterfall faded in and out with the gusts of wind. A one-horned chamois (Rupicapra pyrenaica) foraged among the boulders on the other side, unperturbed as long as I kept my distance. Perhaps it had found a patch of alpine clover, with its delicious liquorice-flavoured roots.
After some false starts, I located the path on the other side of the stream, and more steep climbing took me to a cluster of small lakes. Tiny frogs clung to stalks of grass, among white starry flowers. Unexpected murmurs came from the rocks, where water trickled unseen.
Besides its proliferation of lakes (272 in all), the park is also renowned for the splintered crests of its mountains, a myriad of crags and needles, the result of freeze-thaw action. The roving clouds fragment the mountains even more, as the sun selectively illuminates a peak or picks out a crevasse. Highly sculpted, yet never static, it’s a landscape that is renewed with every step you take.
I also appreciated the park’s capacity for regeneration in another sense. It bears the weight of visitors lightly - you wouldn’t guess it had just emerged from the busiest month of the year. In the peace of that day, a weathered clothes tag found by a rock, “Boreal UK”, seemed it was lost a decade ago.
In such surroundings, and with so much new flora and fauna to take in, you enter a different time dynamic, disassociated with your watch. I could hardly believe the time - mid-afternoon and, although the Refugio d’Amitges was in sight, the Port de Ratera was still a long way off. I’d try again the following day.
Aiguestortes and Sant Maurici national park, Mammals, Plants, Pyrenees, Trip reports | Tags: Aiguestortes and Sant Maurici national park, alpine clover, Cascada de la Ratera, chamois, Port de Ratera, Rupicapra pyrenaica, trifolium dasphyllum, walking in the Pyrenees|
