The Pyrenees

by Hilaire Belloc

If you consider what he actually sees when he gets to the summit of the pass, you will appreciate yet more easily how his error will come about. He will see something like this, with an obvious way straight before him, and with nothing to tell him that he must go up a second col, two or three hundred feet above him to the right at D, if he is to get into the right valley.

It is in cases of this sort that Schrader’s map is so useful—so far as it goes; but it only covers the quite central part of the Pyrenees, and the contours are 100 metres apart.

The particular ways in which one may get into the wrong valley are innumerable, but these three types which I have given include all the most common of them; and, of the three, the last which I have described in such detail is at once the most perilous and the most common.

While I am upon this subject of getting into the wrong valley on the downward side, I ought to mention the tricks which the map and one’s own judgment play upon one as one goes upwards.

Errors made as one follows the map up a ravine are nearly always due to making a false estimate of distance. The path may be lost for a considerable stretch, and the contours may at first be puzzling, but if one will trust to one’s map and to one’s compass one will never go far wrong, unless one misjudges distance, and it is on this account that in the directions I give below for particular places, I mean distance with what care I can.

Thus you may miss the path which branches off from the main path from the valley of the Cinqueta to go eastward over the Col de Gistian; but if you have made an accurate estimate of distance, and trust to the measurements given, you cannot fail to identify the stream up which that crossing lies.

Nothing can replace judgment, but there is a rule of thumb which is workable enough, and that is, save under conditions of extreme fatigue, that your kilometre on a mule path hardly ever takes you less than twelve minutes or more than fifteen. I except steep climbing of course, but steep climbing only comes at the port itself, or in quite unmistakable ravines and gorges, where you will not lose your way. Where you lose your way is in the Jasse, or in the bifurcation of main valleys, and there, as you plod up your mule path, you will, as I say, never take less than ten minutes over your kilometre (which is a centimetre upon your map)—and you ought always to have a little measure with you—nor will you ever take much more than twelve, save when you are quite knocked out and unable to calculate distance at all.

These limits will seem narrow to those who have not experienced such paths. But they are wide enough. You must of course note the times during which you choose to stop, and it is also true that if you make quite short halts for a moment or two, of which you take no record, you will quite put out your calculation; but twelve minutes to the kilometre is 3 miles an hour, fifteen is 2½ miles an hour, and if a man gets over a level mule track in the early morning carrying weight a little faster than the first pace, or on a steep part at evening a little slower than the second, yet the occasions when this rule of thumb fails are rare.

When your watch tells you that by the distance measured you should be approaching a bifurcation, or any other doubtful place, halt and decide.

If you do miss your way going upwards, or do take the wrong valley, if, in a word, you are lost (as I was badly four years ago, so that I have the right to speak of it), the first thing to remember is that the path, if you will take it downhill, will lead you at last to men. The rule about following running water is all very well in many mountains of the ranges, but it won’t do in the Pyrenees, for the running water very often goes under sharp limestone cliffs, and if you don’t find your way round or over them, you may spend more hours than are safe in looking for a way out. They form a very complete prison door, indeed, do these gorges.