Hiking La Pedriza, Spain

Last weekend I went hiking in La Pedriza near Madrid with a group called Hiking in the Community of Madrid. I already reviewed this great new group for Gadling, but wanted to share some more of my photos here. La Pedriza is a wilderness area above the town of Manzanares el Real, 45 minutes from Madrid. As you can see, it's pretty rugged, with lots of cool rock formations.
The photo below shows some strange markings they use here in Spain. While 99% of the world's population would assume it's an arrow indicating that the path goes to the right, actually it's to tell you that the path bends to the left. I would have never known that! You really need a guide in La Pedriza.
Here's the approach to a cool cave that used to be a refuge for bandits, Spanish Civil War guerrillas, and most recently a band of murderers. We were relieved to find it unoccupied. I was hoping to find some Civil War bunkers and fortifications like I did on a previous hike, but no luck.
La Pedriza is popular for rock climbers. There's some awesome bouldering opportunities too.
We also spotted a herd of Spanish ibex.
This tree growing out of the solid rock made me smile.
Check this out, a bar named after my son!
And some tagger uses my name! Maybe he's a fan of my writing. I was hoping to find something named "Almudena" to complete the family. Maybe next time. I'm hiking with this group again tomorrow, so stayed tuned for more photos of Spanish wilderness.

My Favorite Travel Post for 2008

Looking back at this blog, which I started in March of this year, I see I've written 108 posts. Not bad for a beginning blogger! I think my favorite post was about the day I didn't see a yeti. It was certainly an eye-opening experience for me.

Do you blog about travel? What was your favorite post? Send me a link at seansontheweb (at) yahoo (dot) com and I'll post it here. It could be a favorite trip, a great photo you took, or some cool postcard someone sent you. Check out my other blog for similar "best of" posts I'll be covering from across the blogosphere.

Hiking a Roman Highway

I'm way late posting this, but a month ago a friend of mine named Shawn (known locally as Shawn Numero Dos) and I went hiking in the mountains north of Madrid. For one long stretch we followed an old Roman highway built by the Emperor Vespasian, who reined from 69 to 79 AD. We started at the town of Cercedilla, checking out the old Roman bridge pictured above. This thing is two thousand years old and still takes traffic it wasn't even designed to support! Judging from the architecture it looks like it was reinforced in the late Medieval or Renaissance period, but still. . .

Then it was on to the Roman highway. Much of it was repaved in the 16th century, but I'm sure some of these worn old stones are original. It was a thrill to be walking the same route the Romans did, seeing the same landscape and possibly stepping on the same stones.

It was a beautiful day but the heat of summer was already starting, so we were glad to get further up into the mountains. We went across a long exposed stretch and then descended into a nice lush forest. We'd left the Roman road by this time, but enjoyed the coolness of the forest.

Then we came across this little waterfall, and right next to it a stone that had naturally weathered into a perfect chair. In England these are called "Druid's Thrones" and some do, indeed, look like they've been altered to make them more comfortable. I don't think this one had been altered, but I could easily see some wandering holy man taking up residence next to this little stream, sitting on his natural throne and making prophecies to the local yokels. So of course, that's just what I did.
I predict I'll go back sometime. . .
If you want to go yourself, there are maps here and here.

The Day I Didn't See A Yeti

A BBC reporter wrote earlier this week about his hunt for the mande barung, a jungle version of the famous yeti or Bigfoot, supposedly to be found in the jungles of eastern India on the border with Bangladesh. He interviewed eyewitnesses and came across some interesting footprints, but didn't see the creature itself. Go figure.

As an agnostic in all things both spiritual and mundane, I can't utterly discount the possibility of giant human-like creatures in the world's remoter regions, but my own experience in the Himalayas makes me doubtful.

Back in 1995, I hiked to the Annapurna Base Camp, at an altitude of 5,050 meters deep in the Himalayas. I'd already heard talk of the yeti, and even met a Sherpa who claimed to have seen one. He pointed to a rock just off the trail and said he saw one sitting on it. When I asked what it looked like he said, "It looked like a man."

Once I got to the base camp, I stayed in a stone hut nearby and the next morning went exploring. Pretty soon I came across some amazing tracks in the snow. They looked for all the world like the footprints of a barefoot man, except very large and strangely rounded. I followed them for about a hundred meters onto a part of the slope shielded by a high outcropping of rock. This part of the slope hadn't received any sunlight, and so the snow hadn't melted at all. The tracks there were different--much smaller and obviously animal in origin. I'm hardly an expert tracker, but to me they looked like a fox's. I retraced my steps and looked at the "yeti" footprints. They were obviously on the same trail and there were no other tracks in the vicinity, and nowhere for the yeti to run off onto the rocks and a fox to miraculously take up the trail.

So this is what happened: the snow on one part of the trail got warmed by the sun and the tracks partially melted, becoming wider and rounder. The claws became "toes" and the pads of the feet joined into one oval mass. I've read up on this phenomenon and apparently it's quite common.

Oh well. If I hadn't let my curiosity push me into tracking a yeti, I might have become a believer.

Hiking the Sierra de Maliciosa

Last weekend a friend and I hiked to the top of La Maliciosa, a mountain in the Sierra de Guadarrama just north of Madrid. At 2,227 meters, it's one of the taller peaks in the range, the tallest being Peñalara at 2,430 meters. That's next.

The parking lot is at 1,630 meters, so getting to the summit is not as impressive as it sounds, but it was still a nice jaunt after being city-bound for all too long. The recent rains (which the poor Catalans haven't shared) made the forest you see to the left a bit squishy, but once we got above that we were treated to a fine display of wildflowers. We even came across a small waterfall.

The greenery disappeared pretty quickly, though, and we continued up some rather grim rocky bits to a peak, then through a small valley under lowering clouds before we made it to the peak.

Cool weather at last! I wouldn't want to do this hike in summer. Since going back the same way we came up would be boring, we decided to traverse a rather nasty scree of unstable rocks with ankle-snapping gaps in between. The rocks were all covered with rough lichen, so hanging on with uncovered hands was not an option for anyone who doesn't do manual labor for a living. It was slow going but good fun, and we got back about five hours after we started. I'm not sure how many miles we did (I wouldn't have made a good Victorian explorer) but it felt great after walking on pavement.

My companion being English, we had to end the hike with a couple of beers, so we headed to a bar in a mountain hotel. The hotel was built in 1940, during the reign of Franco, and so was built in Tyrolean style. Charming anywhere else, rather disturbing given the history.

This hike has whetted my appetite. I need to get back out into the mountains!