Balaitous

July 02, 2025

Balaitous

Balatious - 3145M

847M Prominence

42.83897, -0.29031

July 2, 2025

HRP Day 12 stats

2556M Ascent, 2337M Descent

26.42 KM

I woke up in my bivouac at the scenic Refuge de Pombie. Most people who wake up at Refuge de Pombie climb Pic du Midi d'Ossau, but unfortunately this spectacular monster of a mountain has some low 5th sections, and is better done with a rope or a partner at the very least. The morning started by descending into the Valle d'Ossau where a highway cut through. The trail then immediately climbed from the valley bottom at 1350M up to the Col d'Arrious at 2250M. Just after the col was Lac d'Arrious, and then I was confronted with the passage d'Orteig. This passage is one of the only technical sections of the HRP traverse that I am loosely following. It is a quite exposed slightly scrambly section, but there are chains installed over the length of the section, so it never feels unsafe. After the passage I descended slightly to the Lacs d'Aremoulit. After the lakes there was a climb up to the Col du Palas at 2520M. From here the Port du Lavedan is not far. The passage known as Port du Lavedan can be tricky with snow, but it was snow free thankfully, so it was just a bit of a scramble. From here I forfeit the route I had been following for a while and come up with my own. I had planned a route to stay high up on a ridge to approach the Balaitous, passing by Sommet de Batcrabere and Pena Barana from the Port du Lavedan. Once I arrived there though, it proved to be impossible without a lot of technical climbing. It was extremely gnarly terrain. I decided to then descend towards the Lacs de Micoulaou before making my way up to the Breche des Cisaux on the Balaitous west ridge. The climb up to the Breche was exhausting and very slow, the ground was so loose, chossy and steep, it was like walking up molasses. From la Breche des Cisaux I made my way to Cueva Andre Michaud, where I finally took my first little break of a long day. I then ditched my pack in the cave at 2670M and made my way up a mix of scree and slightly more solid rock to the summit. There were some slightly more exposed parts of the climb but nothing more than some easy class 3 up to the summit. The most memorable part was forgetting my trekking poles just under the summit, on the descent, so I unintentionally had to add 400 meters of vertical gain to an already long day. By the time I got back to the cave I took a good break to eat some food. The clouds still looked acceptable for the moment so I descended the mountain in a South West direction towards Ibon de Arriel Bajo. The trail from here on out was following a GR route, so navigation was easy. It rained and thunder stormed a little bit, but I only got marginally wet. I continued on to Refugio de Respomuso at 2150M, where I took a bit of a break and dried myself out. I knew I didn't want to stay here for the night though, and wanted to get closer to the next day's objective, so I kept trekking East before setting up camp for the night in a fantastic valley to the West of Grande Fache.