Hannah (who many of our guests will have met guiding here over the past two summers) and her partner Ken have been over for New Years doing some snow shoeing and trying their hand at ski touring. Snow conditions aren’t great at the moment and we’ve not had a huge quantity of snow but they still have had some great days out.

Snowshoeing towards the Col des Arazures

The area around Portalet is always a good bet when the snow’s not so good and there are a whole load of peaks that you can do from there – it’s like a winter playground!

It was Ken’s first taste of ski touring and he’s caught the bug already! You can read more about Hannah and Ken’s adventures on their excellent Apple Mountaineering blog.

Approaching the summit of Marboré with Cilindro (3325m) behind

Spent a fantastic weekend ski touring in the Ordesa National Park staying over at Refugio Goriz and tackling the summit of Marborè (3248m). Stunning views into the Ordesa Valley and beautiful weather without a cloud all weekend.

High in the park looking down onto the Ordesa Canyon

Rather than the usual summer route to Goriz from the Pradera in the Ordesa Valley we set out from the cross country skiing pistes above Nerin which is a better route on skis in winter and takes you right to the rim of the canyon.

The southern cliffs of Ordesa from above

The Sierra de Custodia

The park looked fantastic covered in snow and the views just got better as we skinned along the ridge of the Sierra Custodia before descending down to Collado de Goriz and onto the Refugio.

Refugio Goriz is surprisingly cosy in winter with a wood stove heating up the dining room and with much fewer people than in the summer they’ve even set up a ping-pong table!

Refugio Goriz

The objective for the next day was the peak of Marboré – at 3248m on of the 14 three thousand metre peaks in the park. We made an early start with the snow still pretty hard which made some of the steeper sections of the ascent fairly tricky. As we got higher the views got better and better but the snow harder and harder and we reached bullet hard ice about 100m below the summit. With our ‘cuchillas’ (don’t know the word in English but the crampons that fit on your skis) hardly biting and a big drop below we decided to change into crampons and walked the final section.

Hard work on the ascent - just after this we changed to crampons

Glorious summit views from the peak. It sits on the border above the Cirque de Gavarnie and you get views down into the village over a kilometre and a half below.

Fabien on the summit of Marboré

On the way down Fabien got straight onto his skis but the ice high up did not look very tempting to me so I walked the first couple of descents until we got to some softer snow lower down.

We didn’t get back to the Refugio until 3.30 and we still had a long trip back to the car. I have to say I was pretty shattered and could have easily have settled down next to the stove with a glass of wine and stayed another night at Goriz! But on we had to go so we retraced our steps along the Sierra de Custodia where we witnessed a beautiful sunset.

Monte Perdido, Pico Añisclo and Torre de Goriz in the last glow of the sun

The final hour or so were done by moonlight under a fantastic clear sky before arriving back at the car pretty shattered. Great weekend.

Fancy staying at Refugio Goriz? Take a look at Hike Pyrenees Refugio Week which spends two night at Goriz, walks the length of the Ordesa and Añisclo canyons and summits Monte Perdido.

View from the summit of Petrachema (Pic d'Ansabere)

Refugio Linza lies at a remote roadhead in the Anso Valley. It’s a beautiful wilderness area with not a ski lift for miles and perfect for ski touring, snow shoeing and cross country skiing. The weather forecast was perfect last weekend so Fabian, Dian and myself headed over there for some touring.

Heading out from Refugio Linza

Beautiful blue skies as we headed out Sarurday morning towards the border peak of Petrachema (or Pic d’Ansabere in French). Long ascent making our own tracks and with just sarrios (Pyrenean chamois) for company.

Two chamois watching us from above

As we approached the summit clouds came in suddenly but fortunately we still got fantastic views over a huge area – down into the Cirque de Lescun and across to Bisaurin, Balaitous, Pic du Midi d’Ossau and all of the peaks in the Valle de Tena. Beautiful.

The summit ridge of Petrachema with the clouds blowing over

Headed back the same way through some fairly difficult snow and I lost count of how many times I fell over. Great day, pretty long with 1400m of ascent and we were glad to get back to Linza for a beer around the fire.