Buck30 - Other Trail Journal - 2025

HRP Summary/Planning

Here's my summary/planning entry for the HRP. I'm not going to write as
much as usual since I'm a bit late to the HRP party. Many of my hiker
friends have already hiked the HRP and there's lots of good info out there
within reach of an easy Google. But I'll briefly give my take on things.

OVERALL

One thing that is undeniable about the HRP is that it is incredibly
gorgeous. Scenic as can be. On par with the best mountain ranges I've
hiked. But one could argue that it's almost too hard to enjoy. I wouldn't
go that far, but it's hard. Harder than most mountain ranges that it's
scenically equivalent too, say like the Sierra mountains. But at a short
450 miles it's just short enough to not kill you.

HRP, GR 10 or GR 11?

As you probably know the GR 10 is a lower route on the French side, the GR
11 is a lower route on the Spanish side and then the HRP tries to ride
higher up on the crest as much as possible (due to how rugged the Pyrenees
are the HRP almost never walks on the crest but it does stay up a lot
higher). The GR 10 and 11 basically have just as much elevation gain and
loss per mile as the HRP, it's just done a bit lower. They also tend to do
bigger/longer climbs, have plenty of rocky/rough trail and are steep too
like the HRP. But they are definitely easier than the HRP. The HRP just has
even more rough and rugged trail, even steeper climbs, rougher weather up
higher and a few well known tricky/sketchy spots. On the HRP other than the
very beginning and end, I was almost never below 5,000' and felt like
mostly around 7000' - 9000'. The GR 10 which Heather was on was way lower a
lot. Enough that when it was hot, it was really hot. It dropped down to
like 1000' - 2000' a lot and then did really big climbs out of those
depths. To me it sounded like a total nightmare, but many people hike the
GR 10 and 11. Personally I wouldn't even consider the GR 10 or 11 when the
HRP exists in such a much more beautiful hike. But yeah, it's harder and
not for everyone.

DIFFICULTY

I thought the HRP was incredibly difficult. If I had to name THE 1 thing it
was how steep the climbs were. I was lucky if the grade was 20% (1000' per
mile) and frequently it was 30% or even 40%. Every single climb was steep,
it was ridiculous at times! And of course the descents were just as steep.
Usually I love descending but at that steepness and combined with rough
rocky trail, the descents became brutal too.

The other issue, related to the steepness, was the sheer amount of
elevation gain and loss. I roughly calculated that the HRP has 49% more
elevation gain per mile than the Appalachian Trail and everyone thinks that
one climbs a ton. If every mile is basically 1000' per mile up or down,
then it doesn't take many miles in a day to exhaust you. I tried to limit
myself to 5,000' of elevation gain and 5,000' of elevation loss per day.
This frequently meant I was hiking 10-12 mile days and a 15 mile day seemed
like a huge day. 5000' per day on a trail like the PCT usually is done over
20 miles, but on the HRP you end up covering 5000' in way less miles than
that. I actually found that, while slower, I covered those 12 miles in a
reasonable amount of time and still had plenty of time to hike in the day
but I just didn't have the energy or motivation to climb uphill anymore and
usually called it a day early.

Beyond that, the trail is definitely rocky. All kinds of rocks, all the
time. The giant boulder fields I found to be the worst, but they weren't
that often. And it wasn't insanely rocky all the time, I would say it was
just moderately rocky almost all the time.

And then there are just a few famous tricky spots. In particular the high
pass of the HRP, Col de Literole had a really short but steep descent from
the top. It was so steep and eroded that I had to put my poles away and
butt scoot down like 30' or so. Then there's Col de Mulleres, this is the
really famous spot. From the top of the pass there is a like a little ledge
you need to down climb to. It can be a little tricky and scary with a pack
on. It's not a big down climb but you are exposed and it's a very steep
fall forward to your death if you actually made a mistake. It would be way
easier with a partner where one person easily down climbs without a pack
and then the other person hands both packs down and then climbs down
themselves. I mostly found it scary as my pack was in the way trying to
down climb. The final HRP mountain, Pic de Canigiu has a blasted out wide
chimney to climb like 100'-150' up. It not that scary but if you have any
sort of vertigo or anything I could see it being disorienting by the time
you get towards the end. Beyond that there are some other very steep spots
and boulder walks where it's easy to break an ankle, but it's just hiking
and nothing unusual.

Overall you need to be confident in your feet and hiking. If you aren't the
HRP might not be the best trail for you. It's not technical, it's basically
just hiking, but it's kinda like the highest notch of non-technical hiking.

GETTING TO THE START AND END

Not a lot of detail here, we flew into the small airport in Biarritz and
took a bus for an hour to Hendeye. At the end there are hourly trains to
Perpignan where tons of mass transit leaves from and then there are 2 hour
trains and buses to Barcelona which is the biggest closest airport to fly
from. With all of the public transit in Europe there are lots of other ways
to get to the start and end.

DIRECTION TO HIKE

The Cicerone English speaking guidebook is written west to east so that's
the way most English speakers hike. There's a french guidebook written east
to west so that's the way most French people hike. I don't really know what
others do but it seems like west to east is more common overall. There
really isn't a super good reason to go either way in the core summer
months. Both sides for a few days are lower and the middle 2/3 of the route
are the highest Pyrenees. I guess personally I would have rather gone the
other direction on Literole and Mulleres, going up both of those would have
been easier than going down.

WATER

There was a ton of water on the HRP. The first 5 days or so in Basque
country was a little drier and the last 3 days in Catalan country was drier
but neither was that bad. The longest carry I had on those sections was a
single 20k carry. The rest of the route there is water all the time and I
barely carried any. Usually the final mile or so up and over a pass would
be dry but it was never for very long. I didn't treat any water but I can't
say I recommend that. There are cows/sheep/horses everywhere but there's
also a ton of water. I felt like the overall quantity of water overpowered
the grazing animals.

SEASON

I'm no expert here but the question everyone always asks is do you need to
bring microspikes/crampons and/or an ice ax. Typically starting in early
July you can get away without them although that's not a guarantee. It
depends on the snow season and snow melt. This year was a bigger snow year
than its been in a while, but then there were multiple heat waves before I
started and the snow melted way faster than normal. Assuming you start in
early July the snow issues would be on Days 21 and 22 in the guidebook so
you can check that out. If you start earlier there are a bunch of places
before that which could have snow, the guidebook mentions these at a high
level what could have snow.

If you do start in early July your first like 5 days and last 3 days are
likely to be very hot in Basque/Catalan country. In between my weather was
great and even when there was an epic 100+ degree heat wave sweeping
France/Spain, the HRP at 8000' was just fine.

One downside of the July/August hike is that Europe is basically all on
vacation and even the HRP had a lot of day and weekend hikers all over it.
Not a ton of people do the entire HRP, but practically every inch can and
is day or weekend hiked. I was frankly surprised by how many people were
out there at times, especially for miles surrounding any Refugio.

I've seen some hikers hike in the Fall, like September. This would be a
shoulder month and could have poorer weather but no snow issues and less
day/section hikers. You could check out Mac's (Halfway Anywhere) blog for
this timing and some of his weather issues.

RESUPPLY

There's enough resupply on the HRP where I carried like a max of 4.5 days
of food twice which isn't bad at all. The resupplies are mostly not amazing
and sometimes small but doable and there's no need for packages or
anything. There's other blogs which list all the options so I'm not going
to repeat that here. There is a post in the Facebook Group (Backpacking in
the Pyrenees including GR10, GR11 and HRP) on June 13, 2024 where a guy
lists basically all the resupplies and the store hours which is very
helpful as the hours can vary and be limited. These surely can/will change
but it's a helpful post. Pretty much all of the resupply towns are
extremely toursity and a couple are even ski villages. This results in a
kinda lack of "real" culture but also can be helpful in that businesses are
open more hours or don't respect the siesta to cater to tourists. My best
towns were the ones where I took short local buses to a bigger town with
cheaper lodging and better resupply. I went to Can Franc from Candanchu,
Benasque from a very large hiking parking lot and La Mansana from El Serat.
These buses were all quite easy to execute. By planning ahead a bit I found
lodging to be reasonable. Be warned that most places don't have air
conditioning so if it's hot out down low book a place with air or suffer if
you don't or can't.

MAPS/GPS/NAVIGATION

I used the English language Cicerone guidebook. On the one hand it's quite
good, on the other hand you can't really follow its turn by turn
directions. But it's great for higher level overviews of each day and what
you can expect. The book works off of hours hiked and not miles since the
terrain is so difficult. I personally didn't pay attention at all to the
hours and pretty quickly figured out my speed based on how much elevation I
was doing each day. That was the main thing that determined my miles. But I
think most people go off of hours. The guidebook is broken out into 44 days
as it tries to end each day at a place you can stay without a tent. Like a
town or Refugio. I took 38 days, but if you take away the 6 days I took off
in towns then it's more like 32 days of hiking so a fair bit fast than the
guidebook. Past hikers friends have gone even faster (Erin did it on 36
days and Recon 34 days).

I didn't carry paper maps and instead relied on my phone app (I use Locus
in Europe, see my UK summary entry for where I get those maps) and my watch
as a backup. The Europe OSM maps are very good although the one thing they
were lacking were borders for all the National Parks and Reserves, I never
had any idea what I was in. It's a very odd omission.

The Cicerone website has a GPS track you can download. It's mapped true to
the guidebook route but it's done very poorly with straight likes and
angles. I traced over it on Caltopo (with the snap-to feature) to make a
much better track which I appreciated. But either way it's good enough for
navigation. The HRP is mostly alpine and hard to get lost. Just make sure
you are climbing to the correct pass or when descending off the pass then
heading in the correct direction, those are the easiest and most costly
places to mess up.

CAMPING AND REFUGIO'S

Camping is mostly pretty easy on the HRP compared to a lot of the rest of
Europe. In France it's generally allowed after 5 pm until 9 am unless you
are in a national park where it's allowed 7 pm to 9 am. There are some
Nature Reserves where it's more restrictive (I saw signs for like sunset to
sunrise which is pretty ridiculous). They call it a "Bivouac" which is what
we call camping in America. Camping in Europe refers to car camping. In
Spain it's basically illegal everywhere but is mostly tolerated. Again, I
saw some signs in Nature Reserves about sunset to sunrise. I was never
particularly concerned, I never saw any sort of enforcement officer
anywhere. I think the only place you could get actually caught would be
near the Refugio's where it is legal but only from 7pm - 9am. I've heard
occasionally a Ranger would be there and like to write tickets outside of
those hours.

The bigger issue is really the alpine and the weather (wind or rain). So
much of the trail is above treeline that if the weather is bad then camping
can be really hard. In particular the wind can cause a lot of problems or
thunderstorms.

The Refugio's and cabins are pretty common. There are Refugio's that are
staffed and cost money and you'll most likely need a reservation in the
summer. These can be extremely popular and are my worst nightmare. I'm very
thankful I never needed to stay in a dorm room in one of these Refugio's.
There are some unstaffed free Refugio's and a lot of small cabins which are
typically old herder shacks that can range from decent to completely
derelict. There are a lot of these and I found that people tend to end up
at them. Some people will stay inside, some will camp nearby. Occasionally
you'll arrive to find an actual herder has taken over the place but that's
not super common. I was again thankful that due to my good weather I never
had to stay in one of these either.

The Refugio's and cabins can be very helpful when the weather is poor or
some people really just don't mind sleeping in dorm rooms or in tiny shacks
with a bunch of other people. Plus the staffed Refugio's cook meals which I
never did partake in. I've heard the dinners in particular are quite good.

DANGERS

I'd say more than most trails the HRP does have some dangers. There are the
few tricky spots I've previously mentioned. Then there's all the rocks and
especially the boulder fields, it wouldn't be hard to break and ankle or
leg on the HRP. Although I somehow had none, thunderstorms are pretty
common on the HRP and the lightening can be pretty dangerous given treeline
is probably nowhere in sight. There's no dangerous animals although I was
occasionally concerned about the 800+ pound cows that wouldn't move or came
into my camp. That's all I can think of.

GEAR

A few things stand out on the HRP that maybe are different than other
trails. I doubt I would have made it without my trekking poles, the
downhills are very steep and the boulder fields are difficult. The rocks
really chewed up my shoes soles more than usual. By the end my soles were
basically gone and I was slipping and sliding a lot (I started with 250
miles on them from Scotland, but even so my shoes usually last 1000 miles
and the soles were beyond dead by the end at a total of 700 miles on them).

In the middle of summer, typical 3 season gear is fine. It can be quite hot
at times but when the clouds come in up high it can be surprisingly cold
too.

WILDLIFE

There's not a lot of wildlife in Europe. The Isards were the coolest thing
I saw. Beyond that some deer. Heather saw some small hogs on the GR 10. I
didn't see much else. I believe there are also Ibex which I never saw and a
small population of brown bears which I also never saw.

BUGS

Not much, occasionally there were some flies and I saw a few mosquitoes but
it was never that bothersome. I never used DEET or anything else.

CELL SERVICE

There's a lot of cell service in the Pyrenees. I had service almost every
day, occasionally I'd go an entire day without service. Once I think I went
3 days. Most likely your phone plan won't work in Andorra since they are
not in the EU, but you are only in Andorra for like 1-2 days.

We used Lyca again. It's super cheap, like 12 Euros for 100 GB of data and
unlimited texts and calls. You can get it with an E-sim. We've heard Orange
is the best but I think you need a real cell plan for that (a prepaid plan
which requires a checking account or something like that I think ) whereas
Lyca is a post paid plan and easy to sign up for. My Lyca service was
plenty good.

PERMITS

None!

OTHER HIKERS

As I've mentioned there are a lot of people in the Pyrenees. It can be hard
to tell who is hiking what and since I'm not super into talking to a lot of
people, I rarely met other HRP hikers. There are definitely a bunch of HRP
hikers though, you just need to talk to folks to find out or eye their gear
and try to decide. My friends who have hiked in the past all seem to meet
other hikers and hiked some days with others. I, of course hiked with no
one!

Here were a few blogs that I used for planning.

Erin/Wired: Her blog is exceptionally good, I used it a lot to get a sense
of what my day would be like. Usually I like to be more surprised but the
HRP was hard enough that less surprise was better for me. She hiked a bunch
of years ago but her blog still seemed plenty relevant. Her blog has been
deactivated but you can get a nice PDF copy here:

https://drive.google.com/drive/mobile/folders/1jR-jWMsQEVixtVl_KVoc1ok3SX9PADZG?usp=drive_link&fbclid=PAQ0xDSwMVyT1leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABp6h7FBC44k_wtQ2qcjSiQtgUVWXWl5Awzt9yRZFt1gXC9cdNi6kV5PNBN_l0_aem_3UFOUAubscSh9e4wiP4UoA

Recon: For a shorter read, but informative and nice pics, my friend Recon
also has a good HRP blog from 2023:

https://ramblinrecon.com/hikes/pyrenees-haute-route-2023/

Kelly/Trek: Kelly, the managing editor at The Trek hiked the HRP in 2023.
She is an absolutely hysterical writer, I loved her blog even if it wasn't
as helpful as Erin's for my day to day. Also she skipped a bunch, but it's
still too funny/good to pass up.

https://thetrek.co/hrp-chapter-1-what-am-i-even-doing-here/

Mac/Halfwayanywhere: Mac is famous and hiked the HRP recently, buried
somewhere in website and hard to find are lots of HRP entries. He hiked in
the Fall shoulder season so this is particularly helpful to see that kind
of poorer weather (but also much quieter).

https://www.halfwayanywhere.com

LANGUAGES

French and Spanish are obviously the languages, I know absolutely zero
French and I know very basic Duolingo Spanish whereby I probably know a few
hundred words but couldn't possibly have a conversation with anyone. I
found it very easy to get by, although I make it a point to not need to
really talk to many people. Young people these days tend to speak English
and the Pyrenees is so touristy that I found a lot of people in the towns
spoke some English. Definitely not everyone but it was really never a big
problem.

One way I handle not knowing the language is to just not interact with
people that much. I don't go to a lot of restaurants and when I do I
typically will do carryout and order something easy like a pizza. I'm sure
I miss out on like that cheese you can buy from a herder hut in the
mountains, but that's not really enough for me to learn an entire language.

Basque and Catalan are also spoken in their respective areas but I can't
say I would have known other than I read that.

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