Location Report - Picos de Europa, Spain
2-10 February, 2022
A week of splitboard- and ski-touring in and around the isolated Picos de Europa mountains of northern Spain. Based near Potes, on the eastern side of the range, at the guesthouse of Picos Snow and Rock Ski Touring in Tama.
Conditions
With the last significant snowfall having fallen almost a month ago, and regular melt/freeze cycles with lots of clear skies since then, the now relatively thin snowpack had fully consolidated into large grained corn - spring snow. The one pit we dug revealed no detectable weak layers or depth-hoar.
Some of our best descents were on this stuff that was, charitably, sometimes less than 10cm deep! So timing was everything - it was good news for sleep-ins - no early starts needed as the hikes weren’t all-day affairs and we needed to give time for the sun to soften the snow, but not turn it to slush. About 3pm seemed the perfect time to start our descents on south-facing slopes - anything else risked shaking your teeth loose.
The avalanche danger was therefore pretty low - only the occasional rubble of old ones were still visible. It was one of those situations where even our guide was dismissive about the potential for avalanches and so we all became slack about doing even the basics of transceiver checks - we had to make an effort to get everyone to do it. We did need to be aware of point-releases from sun-warmed rocky slopes above us though, and stay away from some big open cracks where slow-motion “glide” style movements of bigger, heavier, wind-lips was happening.
Other things we had to watch out for:
Rock falls - on one tour, while still skinning up, a head-sized rock came bouncing down from a nearby sun-warmed cliff, hit the snow 30m above us, accelerated frighteningly fast and fizzed between us just meters away. This prompted a lively discussion, still unresolved to everyone's satisfaction, about whether the correct warning should be “Rock!” or “Below!”…
'Canalitos' - it had sometimes got warm enough over the past weeks to rain hard, up high, and there were some pretty dramatic rain channels (‘canalitos’ in local terminology, 'rills' elsewhere) on the majority of slopes. Only pure south-facing ones seemed mainly free of them. Think 2 inch high Alaskan spines, even on low angled slopes, but hard-packed! A descending traverse of one of these slopes at speed was like going over a road made entirely of speed bumps.
Lost skis - on one of the few days when we saw other tourers, one of them, descending lost a ski far above us at the top of a wide couloir we were still climbing. It had no ski brake so rocketed down the fall line, which we were all traversing below, but luckily for us it hit the one sofa-sized rock on the fall-line, at god-knows what speed, and more or less snapped in two and stopped right there.
Canalitos - Not good for knees or teeth
Some of our routes in the area (blue)
Typical snowpack when we were there - nevé / corn snow to the ground - the top 5cm softening on a hot, sunny day - makes for a good ride!
What went down
Gnarly 4WD driving up and down worryingly steep and narrow mountain tracks; Mountain chapels housing holy virgin effigies with a reputation for not taking any shit from people shooting at them; Chamois bounding across our skinning route; Bushwhacking across streams and through the local 'maquis' (prickly assorted shrub-land); An atmospheric old-man bar in the pretty centre of Potes, with legs of ham hanging from the ceilings as well as heads and skulls of a variety of disturbingly large-toothed local fauna; A right old menagerie at the Picos Snow and Rock Ski Touring base and it's welcoming, entertaining and very capable local guide, Mike; Numerous Griffon Vultures with up to 9-foot wing-spans circling above us; Views to the Bay of Biscay from the top of cols and peaks, just 40k away; The dramatic scenery of the density-packed group of mountains that is the Picos, wild and uncrowded, with seemingly endless options for touring in the right conditions; Cheap food, drink, and, well, everything it seemed, in this part of Spain; And some fantastic spring snow descents that left us clamouring for more.
Stay tuned for a forthcoming Despatch article that'll give more detail about this trip!
