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Day 6: Port de Ratera d'Espot
Each day's route is shown by a red track with yellow highlight.  On "loop" days, our return trip is a blue track with yellow highlight.

Starting and ending Refugios are marked in yellow, while lunch spots are marked by a blue circle (since map areas overlap, several may be shown).

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Route: Refugi de Colomers to Port de Ratera d'Espot and back
Slog rating  [1="Easy" to 10="Argh!"]: 6 ("Ouch! Is that hail?")
Net climb: +300m
Total time (including stops): 8 hours

For our sixth day of hiking we headed towards Refugi d'Amitges, specifially to the Port de Ratera d'Espot which, much like the previous day's passage -- Port de Caldes, bridged two adjacent valleys.

The trek may have been our longest (over 10km round trip), but it was quite relaxing.  The trail -- following the GR-11 entirely as we had the previous day -- took us through a series of mostly easy climbs and past lakes in abundance. 

We enjoyed a snack on a gentle hill and then proceeded up towards the pass.

There we encountered the coldest weather we experienced.  Naturally we were the least prepared, having expected more temperate weather in the lakey region between Colomers and Amitges.  As had become typical by this point, a storm approached as we neared our destination.  Just 20 or so metres from the peak it started to rain, so we ditched our packs under a rock and dashed to the "peak" (the Port de Ratera d'Espot) to get a quick view over the pass and into the next valley.

Then it began to hail, so we dashed (really dashed) back down, grabbed our packs, and bounded down the mountain at a decidedly non-Escargot pace.

It took us quite a while to outrace the storm (or for the storm to stop, say), and we eventually stopped to lunch and dry off atop an inlet on one of the lakes.  Soon thereafter we even took a dip.

We then returned to Colomers, arriving in damp fashion.  We met some friendly Israeli hikers, some of the many friendly hikers we encountered from around the world, and then had a lovely dinner and a lively conversation about Canadian politics (including a particularly passionate but humorous exchange between Mike and Anatole over the Canadian military which either bored or scared away both Mehmet and Christina).

Late at night, the Escargots assembled in the dinner hall to sign the Colomers guestbook, committing to paper the "So you wanna be a vulture?" sketch. We then observed yet another lightning storm before retiring late with the expectation of rising early for our trek home.