Listening to thunder roll around the valleys through the night, celebrating one year since we got married by eating all the pastries in the bakery, hiking up out of Cauterets along cascading waterfalls on the rocky forest path to the Pont d'Espagne, dipping in and out of the cloud, a crazy big yellow and black salamander crawling along the path, arriving at the Lac Gaube in time to catch the last warm rays of sunshine over the mountain side making it glow deep turquoise, sipping wine and admiring the view, setting up camp by the river and watching a dipper do its dippy dance over pebbles on the opposite bank as the evening sky clears and Vignemale looms in the distance...
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There is another GR10 variant out of Cauterets that takes you to Luz-Saint-Saveur in one day rather than 2 or 3, but we had decided from the very beginning that we wanted to take the longer route past Vignemale and Gavarnie and it was worth every single moment of the extra time it took.
The vital statistics:
Total time hiking: 5h24
Peak: 1729m
Total ascent: 951m
Total descent: 164m
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