HRP: Post-Hike Thoughts and Impressions

The Pyrenees High Route (Haute Randonnée Pyrénéenne) was one of the few remaining hikes on my list that I was excited about completing. Although I’m sure the list won’t remain unchanged, the HRP had been on it for a while.

I had incredibly high expectations for the HRP – perhaps to my own hike’s detriment – and had been building it up in my head for quite a while leading up to the start. Beyond strictly logistical research, I attempted to avoid any commentary or firsthand accounts of the hike. This instead let my imagination run free with fantasies of romping through the Pyrenees along the France-Spain border. I imagined it would be akin to one of the high routes I had hiked in the United States – cross-country travel through the high alpine across pristine wilderness unfettered by civilization.

However, I was quickly reminded that this is Europe—a place that has seen aggressive human expansion and impact for far longer than the North American continent.

If you’re looking to hike the Pyrenees High Route, feel free to imagine what it might be like – or to ignore the remainder of this article and draw premature conclusions on what awaits you in one of Europe’s greatest thru-hikes (or is it?) All that said, it’s important to note that I completed this hike late in the season (the second half of September and the first half of October), which has likely contributed to my experience on the HRP and my subsequent impressions.

The Staffed Shelters Are a Double-Edged Sword

Shelters, and the staffed shelters in particular, are one of the distinctive features of hiking in the Pyrenees. The staffed shelters offer hikers not only refuge from the elements, but also hot meals, cold beverages, flushing toilets, mattresses, bedding, and other amenities (could be a place to dry out gear, a wood-burning stove, or a place to charge your electronics). Honestly, they’re a pretty sweet deal and a welcome sight if you’ve been getting your butt kicked all day by the terrain and weather.

Yes, you’ll have to pay for the privilege of enjoying these amenities, but that’s not quite the rub. The thing about the shelters (besides the argument that they detract from the raw and pristene mountain adventure that some may be on the HRP looking for – sidebar: this is the wrong trail for that) is that in addition to them being a welcome sight for you, they’re also a welcome sight for everyone else.

As a result, the shelters can be crowded (even in late season). You may end up sleeping mere inches away from a stranger on either side of you in a room with potentially dozens of other people. The couple of times I opted to stay in crowded shelter dorm rooms, I oftentimes awoke multiple times in the night to snoring, coughing, people getting up to use the bathroom, doors closing, alarms dinging, and always in a disgusting, humid, near sauna-esque atmosphere from the collective breathing of everyone inside (despite my best efforts to open the windows at every opportunity).

Are the shelters great? Yes. Are they also not great? Also, yes.

Resupply Options Are Limited

Where to resupply on the HRP was a big question I had ahead of time, specifically where I would buy more food along the way. It wasn’t entirely straightforward to determine which towns would have reliable resupply and which huts would offer meals (or maybe just snacks). A quick note on the shelters: I wouldn’t rely on them as a reliable source of snacks – what’s available is severely limited and quite expensive.

Overall, I found the resupply options to be limited in terms of the available stores to resupply from, as well as the selection available at these stores. I didn’t bring a stove on the HRP (and I didn’t cold-soak any meals), so I was limited in my food selection, but I typically found myself eating a lot of nuts, candy, and chocolate. Occasionally, I would find a place with some cheese, jerky, dried fruit, or some bars (the bar selection on the HRP is incredibly limited), but my diet mainly consisted of handfuls of nuts and gummy candy.

I would say that you should expect to be resupplying from either gas stations or small (and expensive) local shops with limited selections. The only larger grocery stores on the HRP are either located at (or near) the termini or require taking public transportation (bus or sometimes a train) to a city or town that’s not along the route. There aren’t many towns with outdoor outfitters either (again, at least not the towns located along the HRP that are accessible without hitchhiking or additional transportation), so you would be wise to ensure you’ve got your kit dialed before setting off.

Not All Unstaffed Shelters Are Created Equal

Unlike the staffed huts, there are a considerable number of unstaffed shelters along the HRP (not that there aren’t plenty of staffed shelters, but the number of unstaffed shelters far outnumbers the number of staffed shelters). Maps oftentimes make little distinction and offer few to no clues as to what you can expect to find at each of them.

The unstaffed shelters range from well-constructed, clean, multi-room shelters with tables and sleeping platforms to decrepit, literal shit-filled, half-destroyed wooden death traps. In other words, some are impressively nice, and some might as well not exist. As a general rule, the shelters in Andorra are nice, the shelters above treeline are (typically) nicer, and the shelters near the termini aren’t quite reliable (and on the eastern side, they’re a bit sketchy).

It’s not necessarily a good idea to rely on a shelter unless you know it’s in decent shape. There’s also the chance that you’ll show up at a shelter (particularly a nice one) and it will already be crowded with other hikers (unless you’re stopping early in the day). If the weather is awful and you don’t want to pitch a tent, nothing is stopping you from grabbing a spot on the ground, but it’s good to practice courtesy when deciding to sleep in a shelter with others.

I am working on a separate post detailing each of the unstaffed shelters with photos and descriptions of each for future HRP hikers.

English Was Not Widely Spoken

Chances are that if you’re reading this, you speak English. Ideally, if you’re also hiking the HRP, you should also speak French and Spanish (and, if you’re really cool, Basque). This is not to say that you’re doomed to failure if you only speak English, but speaking a bit of either Spanish or French will go a long way (depending on which side of the border you happen to be on).

I found the HRP to be a particularly lonely trail. Yes, I regularly saw other people, but I rarely encountered people who spoke English well enough to have a meaningful conversation with. Oftentimes, I found myself struggling through a mishmash of Spanish accents or in a room filled with francophones. Again, I never felt this was a barrier to completing or progressing down the HRP, but it’s certainly something worth pointing out and not necessarily something I considered before starting.

Despite the language barrier, everyone was generally quite friendly, and I never had a negative experience with an individual along the trail (just angry sheep dogs).

Andorra Is Short and Sweet

Andorra is a landlocked country wedged between France and Spain, about three-quarters of the way through the HRP if you’re hiking eastbound (toward the Mediterranean). From what I could tell, most people there speak Spanish, but the official language is Catalan – I assume most people there also speak this. It’s not part of the European Union (hence the different license plates on cars there) and has an area of just 181 square miles (468 square kilometers). A bit more Andorra trivia for you: its co-princes are the Bishop of Urgell and the President of France.

The HRP enters and exits Andorra without any noticeable signage or fanfare, but the principality is distinct from its neighbors. The shelters there are among the best on the entire route (honestly, I wish all the HRP huts were as nice as the Andorra huts), and the towns offer a greater range of lodging and dining options. That said, there was no grocery store in Llorts or El Serrat, the two adjacent Andorran towns I walked through, but apparently there is one in Arinsal if you opt for the GR11 variant.

I spent just one night in Andorra, in one of its lovely shelters, Refugi de Cabana Sorda, as the HRP traverses a total of just over 30 miles (48 km) of trail through the country.

There’s a Fourth (and a Fifth) Country

France, Spain, and Andorra are the three countries the HRP passes through, with France typically being seen as the home of the route (more on this below). However, the western terminus and the westernmost portion of the HRP are in the Basque Country. What’s the Basque Country? It’s a region straddling the France-Spain border with a rich and complicated history we won’t be delving into here.

Suffice it to say that the Basque Country is home to the Basque People, and the Basque People are Basque. Not French, not Spanish, but Basque. Despite many of the people here speaking either Spanish, French, or (sometimes) English, they also speak Basque. The language is classified as a language isolate, meaning it has no demonstrable relationship with any other languages. If you’re seeing lots of words with what seems an unusual number of letters K and X, you may be in the Basque Country.

Then the easternmost part of the HRP is home to yet another fiercely independent region, Catalonia. Here, the people speak Catalan (most similar to Spanish). It’s unlikely that you’ll have any language troubles in Catalonia that you didn’t experience elsewhere on the trail, but if you’re wondering what the yellow and red striped flag is, it’s the Catalan flag.

You Spend A Lot of Time in Spain

I oftentimes don’t know what to call the HRP since the initialism (of which hikers are so fond), HRP, stands for the French name, Haute Randonnée Pyrénéenne. What’s the English name? Typically, people refer to it as the Pyrenees High Route or the High Pyrenees Route. What’s the Spanish name? Without looking it up, I’ve no idea, as I’ve never heard anyone use it before.

All this to say that despite the HRP typically being considered a French thru-hike, it could just as easily be regarded as a Spanish thru-hike. The one thing France does have going for it here is that both the western and the eastern termini of the HRP are located in France (albeit, quite near the Spanish border). The Hexatrek – now considered the French thru-hike – also closely follows the HRP for much of its journey, which typically constitutes the final leg.

There were many times when I would arrive in a village and be unsure whether I was technically in France or Spain (and then there was the time I was in Andorra). Just don’t make the same mistake I did and ask someone whether you’re in France or in Spain while you’re still in the Basque Country. And no, there are no border crossings or checkpoints when you pass between countries – it’s much the same as passing between American states.

Livestock Is Everywhere

One thing I didn’t anticipate was the seemingly omnipresent livestock in the HRP: cattle, sheep, horses, goats, and even some pigs. Nearly everywhere on the HRP, from the coastal beginning and end to some of the highest passes in the National Parks, there was livestock.

You may be climbing up to a beautiful mountain pass all by yourself and feel miles away from anything and everything, and then all of a sudden, there’s a cow with a bell dang-a-langing from its neck just over the rise. In some areas that would otherwise be nice for camping, I encountered so much livestock with so many bells dinging that I deemed it nearly impossible to sleep with all the racket.

One consequence of this was that I didn’t feel comfortable drinking straight from any water source. I filtered all my drinking water on the HRP.

There was not much in the way of wild animals (I saw a handful of isar and ibex), but the livestock was everywhere. That said, I did speak to one hiker who claimed to have seen a bear, but after I chatted with him, I wasn’t quite sure how reliable a narrator he was.

Another thing to be aware of (and something for which there are signs warning you of) is the sheepdogs tasked with protecting livestock. These dogs are big and angry, and you should give them as wide a berth as possible whenever passing them. If there’s one thing to be afraid of on the HRP (other than thunderstorms), it’s these puppies.

There Are No Privies

Perhaps one of the saddest parts of the HRP – and certainly not something I thought about before beginning the trail – is the noticeable absence of privies. In fact, for the entirety of the HRP, I found only one. Yes, a single privy (that’s a long drop, backcountry toilet for anyone wondering) for the entire hike.

The good news? This privy was awesome (located at Refugi de Cabana Sorda in Andorra), clean, and well-stocked with toilet paper. The bad news? I didn’t even get to use it (and, again, there was only one of them). Granted, there are other opportunities – particularly at the staffed huts – to use a toilet, but even these opportunities are few and far between.

Yes, there are towns where shops and restaurants offer the pleasure of a private bathroom with running water, but when you’re up in the mountains, you’ll be stuck digging cat holes in often stubborn ground. I recommend a good trowel if you’re going to be hiking the HRP, as there’s a non-zero chance the old “I’ll use my heel” or “I’ll use my trekking pole” trick won’t quite cut it when nature comes calling.

The Navigation Wasn’t Crazy

I imagined the HRP would be a mostly cross-country adventure across rarely visited parts of the Pyrenees (similar to something like the Sierra High Route or the Wind River High Route). Sure, I expected it to follow trails when it was close to town or around popular huts, but I had imagined it would quickly depart existing trails in favor of a more rugged experience.

This was hardly the case. Most of the HRP follows well-established existing trails, and the few times it does depart from an established route, there are either cairns or painted rocks (sometimes just a white or an orange splotch) to guide you in the right direction. I found myself looking at my map more frequently at trail junctions to ensure I was taking the correct trail, rather than using it to navigate the route.

There are certainly a couple of scrambly bits, and some of the route would not make for a friendly first thru-hike, but overall, it offered far fewer obstacles, such as scrambles, exposure, or navigation, than I had expected from a “high route.”

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