The climbing on the Maladetta group is very easy on the whole. The glaciers are simple, and the rock, though rotten, is easy. The Fourcanade, a bold granite peak, more easily approached from Las Bordas or Viella in the Val d’Aran than from Luchon, presents no difficulty by the ordinary route from the south, but might afford some very interesting fancy routes on the precipitous northern side. The best climbing from Luchon lies on the main range, and the peaks here have not been so thoroughly explored as those round Gavarnie; indeed there is room for some most interesting new rock routes to be made. The rock again is granite, and is much sounder than the limestone of the Gavarnie peaks; and the main range provides some beautifully sound rock arêtes.
The mountains round Gavarnie and Luchon are not big, are grouped closely together, and the ascent of more than one can often be made in a moderately long day. Therefore a party which clings to civilization will soon exhaust the more important routes and be driven back on making minor variations. Yet there are no other centres worthy of the name. Of course there are places such as Cauterets, or the Baths of Panticosa in Spain, from which a few peaks can be ascended, but these can hardly be called centres. It follows, then, that a party which wishes for any quantity or variety of mountaineering proper must sleep either in inns or huts or must camp out, and inns are so rare and huts are so dirty that it will be forced to camp out if it is to see the most attractive parts of the range. For it is precisely the wildness and solitude of these parts, far from human habitation,—of the Posets, for instance, or the Balaitous, or the region east of the Maladetta group,—that mark off the Pyrenees from the Alps and give them a charm that is all their own. The wise climber will abandon centres and inns and move along the main range, sleeping out, climbing such peaks as attract him, and occasionally visiting some high village for the sake of renewing his food supplies.
This is the only way in which to see and appreciate the Pyrenees, and if the climber adopts it he will have to face problems very different from those of the Alps. Though the ascents will be far easier than those of first-class alpine peaks, yet the external help will be infinitely smaller. He will find the country a primitive one, and if he is to achieve success he must depend mainly on himself and little on professional or artificial aid.
Guides.
In the first place, little help can be obtained locally. At Gavarnie and Luchon there are a few capable men; but the majority of the class called guides in the Pyrenees are guides rather in the old sense of the word than in the newer sense of professional climbers. They are, of course, competent to show the way over the mountains from one place to another, and often even the easy routes up the peaks; sometimes they are good rock climbers. But of actual mountaineering, as a rule they know nothing. Most of them have little knowledge of snow craft or of the use of the rope—which they are apt to regard as a danger to themselves rather than as a safeguard to their party; and above all, they have nothing of the high tradition of the alpine guide. A guided party in the Pyrenees would save time below the snowline in getting across country; but, provided they had a little experience of the Alps and of English climbing, above the snowline they would usually be safer alone.
There is also in the more remote districts a class of men who offer themselves as guides, but in whom it would be unwise to put any trust for any purpose whatever, especially in the off season when the mountains are more than usually desolate.
Though brigandage is now extinct in the Pyrenees, there are still persons who will seize any chance of returning to a modified form of it. But even if we allow that some guides are better than others, the Pyrenees remain essentially mountains for the guideless, and if the climber takes a guide, he will lose half their charm while adding little to his own safety or achievements.
Maps.
Again, in Switzerland, the climber rightly puts implicit confidence in the accuracy of his maps even for minute detail. In the Pyrenees he is unable to do so. There are three maps of importance, and none of them approaches the excellence of the Siegfried map. The first is that issued by the French Ministère de l’Intérieur, and published by Hachette et Cie, in plain paper sheet. Its scale is small (1⁄100000), it has no contour lines, it is rather indistinctly printed, it makes little attempt to delineate accurately the higher mountains, and on the Spanish side it gives no more than a general indication of the geography of the country.
The map of the État-Major de la Guerre, which is on a larger scale (1⁄80000), formerly sold at 1 fr. 20 c. a sheet, is even worse; this also is not a contour map, and it stops entirely at the frontier, and leaves the Spanish side a complete blank. Its printing, moreover, is blurred and indistinct.