30th Birthday trip up Mulhacen

Ok, I have been meaning to write this for quite some time now.
For the last few years, my dad, brother and me try to go off for a walk up some reasonable hills somewhere different on or around my birthday.  Previously we’ve gone up Scafell Pike, Ben Nevis, Snowden and Helvellyn all in the UK.  For my 30th we decided to head further afield and coupled with my growing obsession for all things Spanish, looked at hills there.  Eventually, I stumbled across a hill in Andalucia called Mulhacen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulhacen) which looked to suit all the requirements, including being over 2,500m above sea level which is where the onset of altitude sickness can start.

Planning the trip was the next stage, and after searching through many blogs and guides, I couldn’t really find anything recent or for what we were trying to do (which is the main reason for writing this.

First off, we (or rather my dad) found a map of the area.  We had to then find a suitable place to start from and eventually settled on Trevelez.  After reading guides, most of which said cars aren’t permitted into the National Park and as Trevelez is in the National Park, we couldn’t drive there.  This doesn’t seem to actually be true, but I’d recommend taking the bus anyway!

Before all that, we needed to book flights and accommodation.  The cheapest flights we could get were to Malaga, but we arrived at about 9pm at night.  Once there, it was a short train ride to the centre, then a brief walk to the hostel, the Villa Alicia just out of the town centre.  It was comfortable, cheap in price, and perfectly suitable for our needs.  we got up the next morning and headed to Trevelez via Granada by bus.  Spanish buses are brilliant, they’re cheap, comfortable (more like coaches than buses) and run very frequently.  I think the total cost was about €15 each to get from Malaga to Granada, then Granada to Trevelez.  As we had a brief stop over in Granada, we picked up some supplies at the supermarket and headed back to the bus station.

The bus journey to Trevelez is a fairly long trip, but through wonderful scenery (the bus does get a bit close to the massive drop into the valley bottom from time to time!) When we arrived, we went to the hotel, Rural Pepe, in the lower barrio.  It’s worth noting that Trevelez is famous for it’s air dried hams, and ham is a very prominent feature on all menus, other things are on offer, but most tapas is ham and cheese!  We headed off to a restaurant for a good meal (‘borrowing’ a knife to make the sandwiches for the next day’s walk) and headed to the hotel to get some sleep.

The next morning we were up at 6.30 and ready to walk by 7am.  It’s an odd time to be up on a Saturday in Spain, it was very quiet.  We headed to the Upper Barrio and found the marked path to the summit.  We’d worked out it was about a 9 mile trip to the summit however, it was cool but sunny, we were carrying plenty of food and water and were confident that we’d make it!

After walking for maybe an hour and a half, losing all sign posts and clambering up some extremely steep hillsides, we stopped for breakfast.  It was getting a little warmer now, but there was a slight breeze.  We had a snack, checked the map (realising we were a little lost, but heading to where we thought the path should be.

As we carried on up, it got warmer, but we eventually found the path and carried on towards the summit.  The hill it’s self is made of three steps, a fairly steep beginning, the middle is less steep and brings you out in a sort of corrie which you walk up the rocky ridge to get to the summit.

As we approached the climb to the top of the middle step, we picked up a friend, closely followed by two vaqueros who shot past us, making us think that maybe walking was the stupid option!  It’s worth mentioning that we were greeted several times by people saying ‘buena’ which initially I look to mean beautiful with a feminine ending.  However it’s that wonderfully lazy andalucian way of shortening everything (I live in Yorkshire, so I’ve a great respect for anyone else who takes out pointless letters!) it is of course short for ‘buenos dias’

Eventually, we made the middle step of the journey, and the view didn’t disappoint!

We walked up onto the ridge on the far left of this picture, the summit is the top part on the right.  For me, it was a difficult walk up, I felt a bit sick, had to slow right down and plod up at my own pace.  I’m not sure if it was fatigue setting in, or mild altitude sickness or what, but both my dad and brother didn’t have much trouble in doing this part.  On the way up (through quite a baron landscape of shattered rock) we saw ibex sitting about on the rocks and slowly the summit came into view

 After that, it was a fairly straight forward decent, a bit dodgy in places on the loose scree but once we were past that, was fairly easy going.  Once we got off the scree and started to descend, I felt a lot better and carried on without any trouble.  We found the path we should have originally taken and carried on to the village.  There was one not so nice moment when all of a sudden a snake dashed across the path, I am not a fan of snakes at all and was glad we saw it there, as I doubt I’d have got up the initial hill through the long grass if I thought one of those beasts was lurking.  Thankfully, it slithered off in the other direction so we carried on.  Then back to Trevelez, thirsty, covered in muck and dust, but happy to have made it!  Time for a long shower, a few beers and a large meal!

The next day we had a look round Trevelez, which is a lovely little mountain village, had some lunch and eventually boarded the bus back to Granada.  I’d been wanting to visit Granada for a while, so after finding the hostel, we set off for an explore, had a great meal, then retired to the park to have a few cold cans!  In England they’d call that anti social, but it is perfectly normal at that time of year.

 

The Map we used can be found here

 

 

 

The next morning, we went back to Malaga, and caught the plane home.

If you have any questions about the specific parts of the trip, or want any advice on doing this yourself, let me know!