Walk Sunday 1 November 2015 Altos de los Catifas

This week it was our big end of the month walk, I know it was officially the 1st of November but the 2015 Limper calendar said October had 32 days.

We had organised 2 walks, an easy walk and a harder walk, in a new area for the Sunday group.

 The original plan was that both walks would start off together high above Guejar Sierra. We would follow a superb path along a ridge with views over to Veleta and Mulhacen. At the summit of Catifas the easy group would return back along the path and the hard group would return along a longer, circular path. In the past if we had wanted to do a high altitude walk in this area we needed 4X4s to get us into the mountains, but in the summer the Tuesday group discovered another access point using good roads, mind looking at the pale faces of some of the drivers when we arrived at the car park, they might disagree with the word good. Whilst the road is tarmaced it is narrow , twisty and climbs 900 metres into the mountains.

 When we arrived at the carpark for the start of the walk it was a bit breezy but we had blue skies and the temperature was OK for November at 1900 metres. We had a restricted time frame for the walk, I wanted to do it after the first snows had arrived on the peaks but before the weather got too cold.

 Our easy walk leader, Hilary, had gone down with the cold which is doing the rounds in the valley so, with some trepidation we had deputised Plym to lead the group safely back to the cars.

  This is one of the best routes into the mountains that I know of. The path climbs constantly but at such an easy gradient you do not appreciate how high you have climbed.        At the start of the walk we had fabulous views of all the snow covered peaks but we could see the clouds were starting to build up around the summits. The higher we climbed the lower the clouds came down the mountains, it was going to be a race to see if we could get to the Catifas peak before we were enveloped in cloud.

 After 1 ½ hours, and before the clouds reached us, we stopped for a little lunch, it was also a good time to take stock of the deteriorating conditions. Plym decided it would be a good place to start her return, as some in her group had planes to catch in Malaga. The rest of us decided to abandon the idea of an extended harder circular walk, we would just do the easier walk to the summit of Catifas instead.

 We continued our ascent but our views became constricted as the clouds came down to meet us. The temperature was also dropping as we reached the summit, and we found shelter in the rocks out of the wind and stopped for our lunch break. It was quite eerie as we were sat there in the mist. The clouds would suddenly lift and you would get a view of the mountains but, before you had time to get your camera out, the clouds descended again.

 After lunch we turned around and headed back to the cars and, as we got lower, we left the clouds behind and once again we were walking in sunshine.

Much to everyone’s astonishment Plym successfully navigated her group back to the cars.

  We tried to find a bar in Guejar Sierra to stop for a drink but they were all full so we headed back to Cozvijar and the Repsol garage where we sat outside and enjoyed the late afternoon sun.

We walked 15.7 km and climbed 544 metres.