There's always a bigger fish

I used to work with a wise man called Mr Tipler, who had a phrase for every occasion. My favourite (apart from “beware the dangerous floater”) is “there’s always a bigger fish”, a saying that has proved itself time and again.

Leaving Hendaye, the HRP felt pretty special, but over the last five weeks it’s become obvious that we’re very much entry-level HRP’ers. The people I met in Lescun were all on similar timetables and doing the walk in a similar way, but I met a French chap at Refuge d’Arlet who was doing it in 41 days, without any rest days. At the time I was quite impressed.

As Klaas and I were having breakfast this morning, shortly before 07:00, a French guy walked past the tents who’s doing the HRP in three weeks. While Klaas and I have taken five weeks to reach this point, he’s taken two. His bag weighed 12kg at the start, and now weighs 7kg - less than a third of ours. His tent is just the outer, and he uses his survival bag as the groundsheet. When we asked if he was having a rest day, he said “I might have a half-day sometime.”

There is, however, always a bigger fish. In this case, the biggest one we know of is a Spanish fell-runner who was sponsored by Salomon to do the HRP in eight days. That’s running 100km and climbing 5,000m each day. Just a walk in the park…

Sometimes it’s hard to imagine these guys on our route. I’ve often wondered how they’ve dealt with the steep, overgrown, pathless areas where your legs get stung by nettles and torn apart by brambles, or how they cope with the massive boulder fields - it’s hard to imagine anyone running there.

Although we may be embarrasingly slow, we actually made quite good progress today, climbing over three cols, past numerous mountain lakes (photo shows the three Estany Inferior de la Gallina) and on a couple of hours into the next day. The only hitch was the two hours in the middle of the afternoon when we lost each other and both set off down into the valley to call mountain rescue, but luckily we met up before any helicopters were scrambled.

UPDATE: Questions have been asked about how we managed to lose each other, so I thought I’d add an explanation…

Shortly below where the photo was taken, we entered a maze of rocky gullies. We were within talking distance, but went different ways round one particular rock, and never saw each other again. The rocks in questions were probably around 30-50m long and 20m high, so finding someone wasn’t as easy as you might imagine!

I began getting the feeling that something was wrong so stopped after ten minutes or so by the first big lake, left my bag with a note on it, and ran back up with a survival bag and medical kit. I retraced my steps, found and waymarked the place I’d last seen Klaas, then followed two other possible routes down, all without any sign of the Dutchman. As I was beginning to wonder what to do next, I met a couple climbing up who’d met someone that could have been Klaas going down, so I thought I’d head for Enric Pujol, the refuge at the end of the third big lake (it’s the tiny silver rectangle above and to the right of the lake) where we’d planned to have a break.

At this point Klaas was walking down the ridge. He too had realised we’d gone different ways, but had decided that searching for someone in the maze was pointless, so had carried on down towards the refuge. Just before Enric Pujol the path makes a difficult crossing of the outflow from the lake in a little ravine, which the guidebook warns may not be possible with a big pack. Klaas didn’t like the look of the crossing so had descended on the south side of the stream, stopping slightly further down to wait for me at Estany de Llavera.

I reached the refuge at about the same time he paused at the lake, and was surprised not to find Klaas or any sign of him. There was no bag, no note, nothing, so I sat down, ate some food, and considered what might have happened. By this stage  I was getting quite worried, so scribbled down possible explanations and next steps on the back of the map - I was expecting to have to explain my thinking to someone (Klaas, mountain rescue, Mrs. Klaas…) so I wanted to make sure I made the right decision.

As far as I could see, Klaas could either be injured and still up the hill (unlikely as I’d searched the obvious ways down) or ahead of me (unlikely as we’d been going to stop at the refuge, and why would he have gone on so far without waiting - was he bored of walking with me?!). After waiting for about 45 minutes I concluded that it was most likely he was injured, so I left a note in the refuge and set off down the hill as quickly as possible, planning to call mountain rescue as soon as I got any reception. Klaas meanwhile had also decided to call the emergency services and was heading down in search of reception!

I ran down for about half an hour and eventually saw a large black rucksack in the distance. I took out my whistle and blew the 3-blast signal we’d agreed, but only succeeded in deafening myself. With my ears ringing, I carried on down for another ten minutes or so, hoping the bag belonged to Klaas. Finally I was within shouting distance and the bag stopped - it did belong to Klaas, we were re-united, and all was well.

Although it all turned out fine, it was one of the more unnerving afternoons of the trip. I had concluded that the most likely explanation was that something had happened to Klaas, and I had all sorts of negative thoughts flying around my head as I ran down to call mountain rescue. At one point I was trying to decide what I’d do if he was dead - I thought Hedwig would probably appreciate it if I went to the funeral, but Klaas would probably want me to finish. I asked him later and he never gave me an answer, but he said he would have gone to my funeral!