Hiking the slopes of Canigou

It was time to leave coastal Leucate for a new base on a hill above the town of Prades in the Pyrénées-Orientales.

The looming presence of Mt. Canigou (2,785 metres) doesn’t just dominate the landscape of this region. It is the most celebrated mountain in the Catalan Pyrenees thanks to a poem by Jacint Verdaguer, the melancholy Catholic priest who walked these peaks with notebook in hand, gathering descriptions of landscapes and folk tales.

His epic poem Canigó (pub. 1886) captured Catalonia’s lost medieval glory and became the foundational poem of the Catalan people.

After a bit of online research, I found a direct route to the summit that could be done in a day by fit hikers. Roughly 10 hours out and back, and what appeared from my topographical map to be a relentless upward grind. 

I wasn’t worried about the lack of flat stretches — I do hundreds of step ups with a backpack full of road salt before each of these trips — but the 39C temperature forecast didn’t bode well. 

When we slipped into the car at sunrise it was already well above 20C.

The route began just outside Vernet-les-Bains, a little spa town that attracted a steady stream of English visitors in the 19th century, including Rudyard Kipling and his rheumatic wife Carrie.

The trail website I saw recommended parking in the centre of town. A hatred of road walking and a close look at satellite photos showed a more convenient pull-off next to the trailhead on a narrow single lane track. 

The road was restricted to local traffic but the wording on the sign was beyond my hazy recollection of elementary school French, especially at six in the morning. I only stopped to translate it on our way out.

The trail began next to the car, climbing steadily through forest before crossing a small open plateau and plunging into the trees once again. 

We reached open ground at the top of a hill a couple hours later, where we paused to pay our respects at a monument to the region’s Second World War resistance fighters (the Maquis Henri Barbousse).  

And then it was onwards and upwards for quite a long stretch that eventually levelled off to cross a scree slope and then a stream, followed by the steepest section so far: a relentless switchback climb through pine forest.

We stopped for a rest and a snack at the unstaffed Bonne Aigue mountain refuge, with views of the peak of Canigou high above us, Andorra and the higher Pyrenees in the distance, and the town of Vernet-les-Bains far below.

I won’t bore you with more blow-by-blow descriptions of uphill slogs on shaking legs. Suffice it to say that we came into the open again around 1pm beneath a high grassy ridge, with views of the Chalet des Cortalets cabin across the valley a few hundred metres below us. That’s where most hikers stop overnight before continuing to the summit the next day.

That ridge above us was Pic Joffre, the highest point on our route short of the summit, and it was there we decided to stop for lunch: a hardboiled egg followed by cheese and butter sandwiches on a baguette.

It was only about another hour to the jagged peak of Canigou but dark clouds were on our horizon and thunder was rumbling above the next mountain. We — or rather, my wife — decided Pic Joffre would be the end of our route. 

And so we made our way down into rapidly increasing heat and humidity on a long knee-aching descent.

Too tired and sore to venture out for dinner, we filled the table of our little stone farmhouse with local cheeses and pate, a fresh baguette, olives, and a bottle of Rousillon rosé.

There would be no relief from the sweltering temperatures that had kept us awake for most of the previous night. It wouldn’t break until a near-dawn storm the following evening, making our stay in the area a largely sleepless one.