{"id":1326,"date":"2013-02-25T22:06:49","date_gmt":"2013-02-25T22:06:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/martinblack.com\/?p=1326"},"modified":"2014-11-22T15:21:49","modified_gmt":"2014-11-22T15:21:49","slug":"some-winter-hiking-in-the-pyrennian-snow-and-ice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/martinblack.com\/oldsite\/2013\/02\/some-winter-hiking-in-the-pyrennian-snow-and-ice\/","title":{"rendered":"Some winter hiking in the Pyrennian snow and ice"},"content":{"rendered":"

We took H and his pal skiing at Camurac in the western Pyrenees.<\/p>\n

I’m not a skier, I’m happy to leave that up to fearless 11 year old boys while I go a tramping in the mountains. \u00a0So after leaving the boys with an instructor I pulled on a pair of hired snowshoes and started walking towards a hill I’d spotted near the resort.<\/p>\n

\"Towards
A snowy hill near Camurac<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Snowshoes<\/a> take a little getting used to but once you do it’s great fun striding out across virgin white snow. \u00a0According to Wikipedia:<\/p>\n

Snowshoes work by distributing the weight of the person over a larger area so that the person’s foot does not sink completely into the snow, a quality called “flotation”.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is very true. \u00a0I could shove my hiking pole a good metre into the snow while my feet left an indention of only a few centimetres, though this was likely to change at any given moment, especially when moving up or down a slope.<\/p>\n

I liked how each footstep gave a\u00a0satisfying\u00a0crunch sound. Big, decisive steps are what is called for with this kind of hiking.<\/p>\n

Everything looks different in the snow, trees are\u00a0contrasted\u00a0strongly\u00a0against\u00a0the light greyscale tones. \u00a0Everything sounds different, it’s quite possible to hear the heavy silence of a snow field. \u00a0All very special.<\/p>\n

\"Winter
Winter trees<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Halfway up the hill a mini-storm set in and visibility\u00a0dropped\u00a0to 10 or so\u00a0metres\u00a0at some points.<\/p>\n

\"Looking
…and the mist came rolling in<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I wasn’t that\u00a0worried\u00a0about getting lost, I had a compass and was taking bearings at every landmark. \u00a0What did start to focus my thinking was the potential for trouble if I were to take a fall and twist my ankle or something.<\/p>\n

J knew where I had headed off to and we had agreed a time for my return but still…I really didn’t fancy the idea of lying in the snow for hours waiting to be rescued. \u00a0Suddenly, with this realisation I understood I was actually taking a bit of a risk. \u00a0Not something I was used to when hiking in the east of England.<\/p>\n

\"Stormy
Stormy weather<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I stopped and spent some time thinking over the situation but as I was doing this the clouds began to part and mist started to clear and suddenly I could see the summit.<\/p>\n

And ten minutes later there I was, at the top of the hill. \u00a0I ate my\u00a0sandwiches\u00a0and chocolate while admiring the beautiful scene laid out before me.<\/p>\n

\"The
The summit, at last..!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And then…I\u00a0carefully\u00a0began the slow walk back down the hill, across the snow field and to the ski resort where I enjoyed a celebratory beer.<\/p>\n

The next day gave us bright, bright blue mountain skies. \u00a0I nipped up another local hill.<\/p>\n

\"The
Snowshoes and mountains<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And I sat back on the snow with the glorious western Pyrenees spread out before me…<\/p>\n

\"The
The western Pyrenees in all their glory<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

…and as the Weather Prophets<\/a> once sang, I almost prayed.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=0FeD4NlT2Ds<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We took H and his pal skiing at Camurac in the western Pyrenees. I’m not a skier, I’m happy to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12,15],"tags":[32,140,76,50],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/martinblack.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1326"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/martinblack.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/martinblack.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/martinblack.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/martinblack.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1326"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/martinblack.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1348,"href":"https:\/\/martinblack.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1326\/revisions\/1348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/martinblack.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/martinblack.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/martinblack.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}