Brazato dam – Refugio de Bujaruelo

Another thunderstorm, this time closer, had passed over us at midnight, jerking me out of my earplug-aided sleep. No matter how often they rolled over, I could not get used to them and lay stiff until they passed. Coming out of my tent, I was treated to a beautiful sunrise. The mountains lay bathed in bright pink light. We had a long but promising day ahead: we were over halfway up to the day’s pass, after which the trail descended over 2000 metres down through wild mountain valleys and into the long canyon neighbouring Ordesa National Park. I was finally due for a rest day tomorrow (I didn’t know it then, but the concept of “due” would change radically over the next three weeks) in Torla, a tourist town outside the national park with all the goodies hikers need. I was also increasingly ready for different company. Meeting Jake and Max had been a treat, but I had long exhausted my ability to listen to football banter. They seemed to get along with each other much better than with me, which I just had to accept. The fact that Max on this particular morning took a year and a day to get ready while I stood tapping my foot did not improve the situation. He chewed absentmindedly through his oatmeal for two hours, meaning it was 9 o’clock before we finally got moving.

By this time I was really exasperated. We ran into the three Chezch girls, and I threw myself into conversation with them to let off some social steam. They were perfectly lovely, but oh so slow. I was distinctly more tired after 10 days of poor sleep and intense hiking, but walking slowly has always been harder for me than letting myself flow forward. I’ve been labelled an anti-social walker by many a friend and first dates, but I just find slow movement agonising. After half an hour I couldn’t hold back anymore and sped ahead to the gorgeous lake of Brazato dam. My throat was parched enough to refill my bottles in the stagnant lake. Ideal for swimming, less so for drinking. The path became a giant boulderfield, and I picked my way through the rocks as my knees screamed their usual protest.

The useless thoughts that constantly simmered around in my head just would not disappear. My legs felt heavier with each step as I picked my way out of the boulderfield and up the Cuello Alto de Brazato pass (2,566m). Why was I so stuck? …why couldn’t I …just let him go? So heavy. He was a thousand miles away, yet still right here. I dragged myself to the cairn on top of the pass. “Get out of my head”, I groaned into my hands and sank down on my knees in the dirt. I’d spent hundreds of hours trying to walk him off through London. Now I was crossing another country on foot, someplace neither of us had ever been, there was absolutely nothing here to remind me of him. And yet, here he was, seemingly walking a few steps behind me all the time like a shadow I couldn’t shake. I felt like crying, but it was too hot and bothersome. Sharp rocks cut into my knees. My thighs cramped. Rising up against my heavy heart and pack was the hardest thing I’d done that day, but I didn’t want the boys seeing me kneel in the dirt. Max and Jake’s banter grew louder as they came up the pass towards me. “If I took a shit in that lake, how long do you think the shit would float for before sinking?” Could those women walk faster please, for the love of God.

We snacked and walked to the shores of a stunningly turquoise little lake. Sunlight sparkled on the matte surface of snowmelt water, colouring the stones beneath a brilliant green. I insisted we swim because we couldn’t not. Max threw himself in while Jake sat in silence. The lake was too cold. Sinking myself into it was like being stabbed a thousand times, my bones immediately ached, and my skin went painfully numb. I wanted something to salvage this day, I wanted the acid-blue water to rinse off my pain and allow me to emerge soft and new on the other side. I felt so utterly drained of energy to the point where I was unable to really take in the beauty of the landscape. The thought of another year of office work if I wasn’t able to be fully present on this trip filled me with dread.

We picked our way down in silence through another boulderfield. Our late start was now manifesting in searing heat, and I sent some stabbing thoughts backwards. One episode of the Savage Lovecast was all I had on my stupid new phone, and the silence enveloped me until I could barely take in where I was. The trail ran parallel to the river Ara for miles, before opening up into a huge valley with enormous wild mountains on each side. I walked faster and faster until I almost ran.

Max and Jake shrank into barely discernible dots behind me as I stormed ahead inside my insulated bubble devoid of impression. Down, through, beyond. The vastness of the mountainscape dwarfed me. Thoughts of my career and professional dreams raced through my head. Did I want to be an intellectual powerhouse or a practitioner creating change with my own hands? Was my future in the field of my education, or in what kept me up at night? I knew I was a better advocate than researcher. But years of covid and uncertainty had also given me job application PTSD – merely reading the words “to whom it may concern” sent my stomach lurching. I was so done with being caught up in major life upheavals that I had quite enjoyed cruising along 2022 without pondering the future too deeply.

At the same time, the Simone de Beauvoir-disciple in me couldn’t escape the feeling that this was a deeply inauthentic way to live. I didn’t belong on the surface of things, with me it was always all or nothing. I was either blooming or wilting. On bad days I would crash, but when I was happy, I was happier than everybody else. Now I was more allergic to uncertainty than ever before. It was extremely tiring, and despite 2022 having been an enormous improvement from its two predecessors, I often drifted through days where my head felt like cotton. My only hope was that resting my brain while pushing my body to its utmost would reignite some of that daring cerebral spark I’d always had.

Clouds gathered around the mountaintops. It was deadly quiet. I knew with absolute certainty that a major storm was coming, you could smell it in the pressure of the air. Trees were just beginning to pop out as I lashed my legs out to reach the bottom of the valley where a woodland path would take me to Refugio de Bujaruelo. The valley of Ordiso opened out to the right as the trail became a gravel road. As pitter patter turned into a full-on downpour, I rounded a bend and reached the Refugio, iconically nested across an arched stone bridge across a glass-clear blue stream. Less picturesque was the huge carpark swarming with trail runners fleeing for shelter from the rain.

The staff scampered everywhere trying to salvage the food in the outdoor seating area and asked everyone to take shelter inside as the roof tarpaulins threatened to tear under the weight of the rain water. I hugged my pack to my chest as I sat on the wooden staircase inside the hallway, squeezed among surely 100 soggy people. Max and Jake arrived after almost an hour, and we started down the GR11 to reach another campsite a couple of miles further on the trail. Not 15 minutes along, we were faced with an impassable obstacle: where a trickling stream had once flowed across the trail there was now a roaring waterfall. The whole section of trail was completely washed out as milky brown masses were swept away around us. Fuck! We scrambled across the slick roots inside the wet forest and fled back to Bujaruelo.

What to do. We could always try the dirt road the cars took. The rain continued. I was in my screaming pink FroggToggs rain jacket as we started down. The thick dark forest loomed on each side of the road. A gigantic crack pierced the sky as lightning struck the woods to our right. No no no no no. Max started humming artificially as we continued. With each leaden step I waited for a bolt to fry me. Deafening cracks of thunder split the skies right above us. Lightening flashed everywhere. I thought I was going to puke. This was the dumbest, most dangerous thing I had ever done on any hike. At the sound of tyres on gravel I spun around to see a car coming towards us. Beautiful rubber tyres to protect against lightning. I flung out my thumb and could not believe my luck when the driver slowed down to let me in. I stared at the boys for a desperate second, they shrugged and I stammered “solo mio, para Torla”. The Spanish couple barely spoke English, but I would have ridden with the Taliban at that point. Five minutes of bliss later a man waved us to a stop. A landslide ahead. Road impassable. You couldn’t make this shit up. Nothing to do but turn back to the refuge, picking up Max and Jake who looked somewhat less perky.

So there we sat, 100+ people at a refuge barely designed for half that number, stranded in the woods. Dogs whined. Families tried to entertain their squirming kids. An exhausted-looking mother attempted to cover up to breastfeed in the dining hall. The mood was lukewarm to say the least. I stared into space while the boys fidgeted in the corner of my eye. I was so tired and fed up, no longer bothering to keep any chat going. We’d had some lovely times together, but their combined ages of 21 and 30 somehow made them both 18, and we had profoundly different perceptions of risk (in addition to the fotball). Max downed two glasses of red wine. The hut warden looped through the dining room to ask who would like to spend the night in the dorm. I seized the moment, I was mentally spent after the day’s drama and the thought of the marshy campground was unbearable. Evening fell, and Max and Jake disappeared outside. I never saw them again.