Episode 9-Ruta de Pedra en Sec, Day 2

This was the greatest most challenging most fun day of hiking for me in this life to date. And OMGoodness even in 100 lifetimes I could never have done it by myself. I’m so glad I hired Fernando, he’s been hiking in the Trasmuntanas since he was a little boy.

There really aren’t a lot of miles to be covered. Today we covered 17 kms, about 10 miles, yesterday was less than 10 miles, 2 years ago ago for my birthday I walked over 32 miles setting my one day distance record, this year on my birthday, I walked 24 miles.

Of course San Antonio is mostly flat, flat, flat and uncomplicated, you just put one foot in front of the other and keep doing it over and over and over again. Vermont is all up and down, up and down, up and down, with almost no flat, just up and down.

But here it’s up, up, up, up and up some more and then down, down, down and down. This morning we ascended more than 800 meters over a distance of maybe 4 kilometers. A half century ago I could have calculated in my head the precise angle of ascent but today I can’t even remember the correct formula so let’s just say it was pretty steep.

But the way we ascended is so interesting. The first part was along the Vueltas de Galileo (Galileo’s Turnpikes). These things are a series of stone roads which were constructed in the late 1600’s by a Mallorquin businessman from Escorca named Antoni Catala alias Galileu, architect and builder.

In 1692 he order the construction of the casas de nieve (Castilian for snow houses) or Caes de Neu (in Mallorquin) and the Voltes d’en Galileu (Mallorcan) as service roads. Basically it was the infrastructure to make ice in the mountains and deliver it to Palma and the other islands.

The service roads were constructed using the “en sec” (dry technique) introduced to Mallorca by the Romans more than 2000 years ago. Honestly they are not much fun to walk on. You have to go super slow and be super careful so you don’t misstep on the pedras and fall on your butt or turn an ankle.

The snow houses are also made without any mortar in the same technique and are just amazing. As well as the charcoal pits along the Ruta.

We then ascended to the Coll des Telegraf at 1126 meters, descended a couple of hundred meters and then ascended again to the highest point the Col des Prat at 1225 meters.

The views were spectacular of the mountains and the sea. We were above the tree line walking along ancient stone paths through overgrown grasslands in the blazing sun for 2 hours. On my own, I would have gotten lost 100 times.

Honestly it was brutal. We had seen no more than 5 people all day. At about 1:30 it occurred to me that we hadn’t had lunch but there was no lunch to have other than an energy bar from Fernando’s backpack.

And then we descended more than 700 meters over the same distance. I was so happy when we returned to below the tree line and had some shade on the sendero. Ultimately we arrived at a lovely brook, soaked our feet and a few kilometers later to Refugio de Tossals Verd. Total time on the trail about 7 and a half hours.

The refugio is really fun, the place is packed, the food is good, our roommmate is a really nice. He’s a guy from Denmark named Soren and he has really good maps and tomorrow it’s off to Soller.

I’m super tired and Fernando again made me drink these Mallorcan Herbes so I’m headed to bed, that’s it for this episode. But herbs are healthy, they’re good for you, right?