Two Days Hike At "Le Cirque De Gavarnie"

​If you have the chance to visit the Pyrenees mountains in France, don't miss the extraordinary Cirque de Gavarnie. A cirque, even though it does circus in French, isn't just a place full of lions and funny clowns, it's also a theater-like valley formed by glacial erosion.

After a last minute packing, my sister Amandine and I leave Toulouse, taking the highway going south, a 230 km drive to the little town of Gavarnie. In the town, there is a parking which charges 4 euros for the day, we negotiate with the lady at the entrance and only pay 5 euros for 2 days.

In Gavarnie, all the roads lead to the Cirque, so instead of taking the main one with the crowd, we take a little trail going through the forest, we get to see waterfalls, more trees, less people and Amandine gets stung by a bee (yeah, it can't be all good!).

The scenery is pretty impressive as we get closer, the Gavarnie waterfall with an overall drop of 422 meters, is clearly visible now. It is the highest waterfall in mainland France. I can see tiny people walking towards it. And at the bottom of the valley, the remains of some ancient glaciers.

The glaciers in the Pyrenees are rapidly disappearing; of the hundreds of glaciers listed in 1850 in the Pyrenees mountains, it remains only thirty and their area decreased by 85%. Sadly, at this rate, by 2050, they will all have disappeared.

Our idea was to hike towards the famous "Brèche de Roland" and to get there we need to climb the Echelle des Sarradets.

From a distance, it looks like it could be a short walk to the beginning of the trail but distances are greater than expected here.

We keep checking the map, we can't figure out where the trail starts, somewhere on the right, my compass is sure, but I can't see any trails, just a giant wall of rock.

Eventually, we find ourselves facing the vertical wall, staring at a paint mark on the rock "this can't be the way..."

Well, just so you know, échelle in French means ladder, so it was, indeed, the right way!

So we start, helping ourselves with our hands, climbing up the rock, you don't need a rope, but unless it's dry and sunny, I wouldn't advice you to try it. We take our time, a fall here could be fatal, it's important to understand the risks and stay focus. ​There are red marks on the rock along the trail so make sure you can always spot the mark, otherwise, you're out of the trail and it could get dangerous!

​The climb is going pretty well so far, as we get higher, the view gets even more beautiful, we see some Isards (Pyrenees chamois), unlike us, they have no trouble climbing the wall, it looks like they're just jumping from rock to rock without a single hesitation.

Eventually, at about 2340 meters high, we lost the trail marks. The last one we see is on a rock next to the snow. Above this, just snow, no way to know exactly where the trail goes, it's now very slippery, the weather is deteriorating quickly and visibility is getting low.

It's 7 pm, I make the call "we have to bivouac now".

Question: How do you pitch a tent when there isn't a single flat space around?

Answer: you look for the next best thing. Which in our case, was a 20 degrees slope.

The grass was probably still covered by snow a few days ago, so it's all flattened and slippery. We put up the tent pegs as securely as we possibly can in the current conditions and we crawl into the tent. Let's just say that gravity does its work wonderfully and we spend the whole night, huddled up in our sleeping bags, at the bottom of the tent.

Needless to say, we spend a pretty miserable night, but at least, we're warm!

And honestly, we had a good laugh about it.

Before going to bed we cook a nice dinner: package noodle soup! I feel like when you're in the mountain, anything hot is considered a luxury!

From time to time we can hear rocks or patches of snow falling in the waterfall making a loud muffled sound across the cirque, apart from that, total silence.

In the morning, the sky is blue again and it looks like it's going to be a warm day. Now we have to take an important decision. Keep going up, trying to avoid the snow or go down. The decision is quickly made, we basically just need to look at our little summer hiking shoes, no way we can walk in the snow safely with these. We can't do 2 meters without sliding.

Time to head down, if climbing up was nerve-wracking, going down is definitively way worse. I use my hiking stick to keep my balance, but it's not an easy task. Eventually we reach the valley again, pretty proud of ourselves. It took us about 2 hours, breaks included. Way faster than expected.

The rest of the hike back to the parking lot goes smoothly. We see a few marmots sun-bathing on rocks, the valley and the huge wall behind us is just breath-taking. The place is so surreal that you don't even need to hike up to appreciate the sacred beauty of the cirque.

Just this view is worth a visit.

There are plenty of great trails in the Pyrenees, it would be a shame not to hike up there if you're in the region.