Pyrenees (iv) Els Encantats
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.
