our first day of hiking in picos, after a serious climb into the mountains this is what it was like once we were up there, quite pretty i think, shot on a 1.3 megapix kodak easyshare, sorry about poor quality and ive applied a slight film grain effect.

This was taken by me on my sisters crummy lil 3.2 megapixel digicam whilest i was on a week long trek through the picos mountains. it was our final day of trekking and we had been led off track by 8 hours, through the sugar rushed brain filled with mentos and slight annoyance with our guide i looked back to witness the mountain ridge we had walked behind 5 days previously, spectacular!

my first ever proper trek through mountains, please be kind lol. thought it was great waking up to see this layer of condensed cloud after our first night up in the mountains. later on in that morning we set off through the clouds and started dropping out of the mountains

You know the time when youve been trudgin up a good ol' calf burner of a slope on your first day of a trek, to get up into the mountains. then all of a sudden you see above all the peaks you were previously closed in by and its that feeling of wow... PROGRESS!!! haha

The return along the paris gorge walk. we walked our way from Cain the 9km to Pte Poncebos where they just had the best tortillas you can imagine! and served to 12 hungry hikers in 12 minutes!!!, anyhow this is on the return walk back to cain so we did 18 km that day in total, we were carrying light pack so it was pretty easy. Try to pick out the path in the lower right corner winding up through the gorge, all the way along followed by a victorian aquaduct, still in operation after being rennovated a few times, but still perfectly balanced from the origional design. a good days walk

La via Regil soluciona la entrada a la cara norte desde Vega Urriello para enlazar en el hombro con la PIDAL. En la foto en la característica chimenea de la cara norte de la PIDAL. Ambiente aereo y espectacular.

Naranjo de Bulnes star movement. Pic taken at 11:30PM 18mm F3.5, 25minutes

The Naranco Del Bulnes is the most important symbol of Spanish climbing. This tooth-like monolith offers some of the best alpine limestone in Spain. Many chapters of the history of Spanish climbing have been and are currently being written here, see the Pou Brothers article in Alpinist 11. It is hard to see, but at the base of the 500 meter west face is a refuge that serves as a base for the climbers attempting the Naranco.

This is the full, in your face, view of the west face of the Naranjo Del Bulnes which is roughly half the height of El Cap. The little black dots are people climbing. Most of the routes are typically done in a day (not if you are not fast!) and offer a mix of free and aid climbing, but there are extreme routes that range from A4 to 5.13+.

We decided to climb one of the easiest and classic routes in the Naranjo. The South Face Direct which is a 6 pitch 5.8 that everyone said would be a walk in the park. This picture is me battling with pitch 5 on the South Face. Rated at 5.8, this pitch is well within my abilities, but as I found out (and not being very acquinted with that kind of limestone yet) there was not much gear available on the pitch. In this picture, having left at the belay the only piece of gear that could protect the upper part of the pitch, I am battling mental fatigue while running it out 40 feet to the belay on technical, slabby terrain.

Having planned 4 days to spend climbing routes on the Naranjo, we were greatly disappointed after two days when it started raining. Thankfully, in Spain there is always an old church or cathedral to visit in every small town and always lots of good food to eat. This picture is of a cathedral that marks the place of some historic battle between the Spanish and the Muslims many, many years ago. How beautiful Spain is!!

esta es la vista de la vertiente noreste del Picu.. justo donde se forma la "y", que separa la Cepeda de la Schulze.

La cara Norte y oeste del Naranjo vista desde muy lejos...