Pic d'Orhy, Otsogorrigaina

Pic d'Orhy - 2017M

601M Prominence

42.98856, -1.00615

June 26, 2025

Otsogorrigaina - 1920M

258M Prominence

42.95806, -0.92006

June 26, 2025

HRP Day 6 Stats

2385M Elevation Gain, 1962M Descent

32.44 KM

Day 6 brought the first truly valid summit on my Haute route Pyrenees traverse; Pic d'Orhy. For the first time on the trip I break 2000 meters of altitude as well. After a stormy night in the shoddy shed I got up and It was quite cloudy. As I climbed up past 1700 meters it was basically a white out. The trail was easy enough to follow most of the time, but I did have to rely on my phone GPS to navigate some of the more confusing sections in the white out. After climbing a bit, I unexpectedly ran into a few hundred sheep that were hanging out about 250 meters shy of the summit. They had completely torn up the terrain and there was manure absolutely everywhere, so it got quite slippery. The winds got increasingly worse the higher I climbed up the peak, and at any moment where I was not covered by the ridge, it was exceptionally bad. Thankfully the trail stuck mostly to the South side of the ridge, so I was sheltered by the strong winds coming from the North. A few sections on Pic d'Orhy offered some chossy and slightly scrambly sections on sharp rock, but they were quite easily detoured. It did seem a bit intimidating in the moment though as I could not see what was 30 meters in front of me, so I was trying to adhere as high up on the ridge as possible for those sections. The summit was quite uninteresting and had a large chunk of concrete to mark it. I kept going after taking my summit picture and made my way down the South East ridge towards a road. The descent was much less complicated than the ascent and was a mere hike in bad conditions. After descending from Pic d'Orhy and crossing the road, I was met with a long ridge walk on a wide grassy pasture. The high winds and rain persevered and made the hike feel very extreme, but eventually the pasture steepened up and I was given the option to climb a second peak of the day. The deviation from my GPX route was minimal again, and even without a trail, tagging Otsogorrigaina would be a quick detour. I spent a few minutes on the summit as the wind seemed to finally be dying down, and I caught a few glimpses at the landscape and path to come. I descended to Col du Port de Belhay, and then further on to Portillo de Binbaletea. Around this area I took a break to eat food and try and dry out my gear. My feet were soaking wet from walking through wet grass all day, and there was not much success in drying them out as the sun was still not out yet. Eventually I gave up and kept hiking on some busier trails until I made it to the Refugio de Belagua. At the refugio I took a nice long break, ate a sandwich and dried out my gear in the sun. At this point David, a hiker I knew from a few days ago arrived, and convinced me to continue on with him. I accepted, and we continued on to climb 600 meters of ascent up to a col, and then descend a further 200 meters to arrive at La Source de Marmitou. I would have stopped and set up camp before this, but the final 10 KM of the day was without any water sources, and I would need water for camp tonight. La Source de Marmitou was an excellent spot to set up camp, and was still an acceptable place to start with the plans I had in mind the following day.