Report and photos from our guide, Jens Foell and clients, who found out recently after a frustrating few days weather led eventually to a marvelous descent in perfect powder snow conditions.
Continues Jens...............
Jens Foell lead ski guide
You might feel frustrated when you come on a ski touring holiday to the Sierra Nevada and you end up sitting out a couple of days of bad weather. Especially if everyone keeps telling you that "you should have been here last week, the weather was glorious!"'. But then again, bad weather means fresh snow, so things can turn around. And, that's just what happened on a Spanish Highs ski touring trip this week.
The tail end of the said bad weather sabotaged the first attempt of getting to the Poqueira hut - we were forced to abandon hopes of reaching the hut after finding the main road already covered in snow down in Bubion and strong winds making standing upright difficult. We decided to make the best of it and actually put on our skis inside Capileira village for a day trip in very tough conditions, staying well below the 2000m line.
But the next day we came back - we still couldn't get the 4wheel drive beyond Capileira village, but blue skies and a beautiful snowscape made the trek to the Poqueira hut a memorable (if very long) one. And the steep ascent on a fairly solid snow cover from the Poqueira gorge up to the hut made our mouths water in anticipation of the next day's ski down along the same route.
Skiing up the Rio Mulhacen
Due to our trip having been cut from 3 to 2 days we now only had one day to climb Mulhacen and return all the way to Capileira village. Quite an ambitious plan when there is that much fresh snow around. But it turned out to be a fantastic day. We skied up the Mulhacen river's gully, very happy about our chosen mode of transport seeing how far some Spanish climbers who'd headed out before us had sunk into the fresh snow. Even the west flank was coated in beautiful fresh powder up to a hight of about 3300m.
The final climb was very icy and had to be done in crampons and ice axes for yet another beautiful moment on a beautiful summit. But the real pay back for our efforts came with the ski down. A perfect smooth layering of powder down the steep West flank followed by more of the same through the Barranco back to the hut! Now that was worth sitting out the bad weather for as well as the long, strenuous ascent. And you can be sure that the Spanish climbers watching us shooting past were well jealous. There was still more skiing to be had from the hut down to 1700m line before walking back to Capileira, the snow down here melting fast in the afternoon sunshine. Another glorious day in the Sierra Nevada!