The 6 January is one of the most import bank holidays in Spain. On the biblical calendar it is known as Epiphany but in Spain it is mainly known as “dia de reyes”, the day when the three kings come back to earth and give presents to children, as Santa Claus does in other countries. For hikers, it is always a good opportunity to enjoy wintertime activities. And for me, this year, a perfect day to go for a hike and celebrate my new incorporation to Hike Pyrenees team!

Out in the New Year snow

But the winter has not brought much snow so far, so it is still not so easy to enjoy wintertime landscapes and adventures. So David and I decided to pass to the other side of the Pyrenees, in France, in the Aspe Valley where winter is always more wintery than on the Spanish side of the cordillera. There we went to explore a quiet remote place of the valley, a small hanging valley below the peak of Arlet. As we thought they would be little snow, we did not carry snowshoes, but actually they could have been useful as we had to walk on a snow layer that reached up to 30 cm in places.

Hiking through the beech woods

It turned to be a perfect peaceful walk through beech woods, following a small river, and reaching a beautiful cirque totally covered by snow. We were definitely convinced that it’s a very quiet area as we hardly saw any other footprints apart from ours all day although the last snow fall was almost 2 weeks ago. After this first exploration of this area we decided that we will come back later during the winter for a more demanding hiking day, using snowshoes or skis to go up to the Arlet hut and do a 20 km – 1000m ascent circular route that we’ve spied on the map and looks very tempting!