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| Sun filtering through the trees |
On a beautiful cold winter morning we decided to leave the city and venture into Madrid's closest mountain range, the Sierra de Guadarrama. The mountains, just north of the city, lie only 70kms or 1.5hours by train from the city centre. At this time of year they are home to a very popular ski resort and although we assumed since it's only the beginning of winter that there probably wasn't that much snow, we were quite surprised!
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| John captured this award winner! |
The hike we decided upon is called the Camino Schmidt and is a 14km venture from Puerta de Navacerrada to a small Spanish village called Cercidilla. Upon arriving in the frosty Navacerrada we literally slid out of the train straight onto the platform covered in ice. This gave us a small exhilarating sense of fear for what was to come! Exiting from the train station meant we were pulling ourselves up the frozen path against the -8degree air and along the hard hand railing, forcing our sliding feet upwards. At that speed it took us over an hour to find the trail head (including a stop for lunch) and before even starting the hike, we were already worn out!
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| Fork in the trail |
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| A trail of ice |
We of course knew there would be some snow, but we didn't expect the trail to start North of the ski field and for there to be so, so much snow! As we began our walk, the sun's heat grew warmer. The nervousness harbouring in the pit of our stomachs grew to excitement as we saw the beauty of the area. Large dark black pine trees covered in soft clean snow filtered sharp sunlight across the beaten path. As the sun heated the mountainside, snow and ice melted and fell from the trees imitating snow fall. There was no sound other than our boots crunching on the freshly fallen ice. It felt magical.
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| Walking the direction of footsteps |
We walked on for over four hours passing the odd group of two or three hikers (looking surprisingly far more prepared than we were, with their overly sensible hiking sticks and snow shoes) until we reached a large clearing. It was here, in hindsight, that
we think we took a wrong turn (although we debated this for quite some time, without really ever knowing how we lost the track). Somehow we ended up literally mountaineering a random peak around 10 kilometers, in the middle of nowhere, east of where our trail should have been...... even though we continued to follow the distinguished yellow trail markers.
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| Stunning nature |
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| Icy ravines |
Thankfully (or not) our GPS could finally pinpoint our location and after our initial dismay at how far from the original track we were and thinking that there is no way we were going to backtrack over that random mountain peak again, we moved into survival mode and hiked down to the nearest road and made our way to the closest train station before the sun set.
However, the station turned out to be deserted and seemingly not used for years. It was approx. 8 kilometers to the next village, which we walked begrudgingly as the sun set and the temperature dropped.
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| I need to take a break |
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| Following the road less taken |
End result: Sierra de Guadarrama 1 vs. John and Kara 0.5 - only because we still haven't a clue where the track forked.... in conclusion we are going to lay fault on the snow... perhaps it was covering a marker we never saw?
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| Kara admiring the view |
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| Looking towards the mountain peak |
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| Snow covered trees |
Nevertheless we had an amazing day out in the mountains and it was just so, so beautiful. We can't wait to get back there soon!
Tot siens,
John and Kara
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| This was not meant to be our trail |
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| Looking back at where we had climbed |
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