Joining two Pyrenean villages is the project that Guillaume Beauxis and his climbing partner Florian Lahargue embarked on last June. The Gabas-Gavarnie crossing is for a good cause. A crossing where every heartbeat helps raise funds for the operation of a child with heart defects. A crossing made with heart.
We won't tell you any more... Guillaume will tell you about it much better than we can!
« D1 => An XXL day around the Ossau! After a very short night, we leave Gabas to arrive at daybreak at the foot of the Ossau to attack the 4 points (D+ 5b III P3). We meet up with the whole team who are climbing by the normal route. For us, it's off to its entrails for 7 hours of mountaineering where vigilance is at 200% all the way! At the kidney of Pombie we are lucky enough to meet everyone again just after they have reached the summit. We continue our journey while they attack the descent. Everything is going well for us despite the fact that Flo is much more comfortable than me on this kind of terrain, I might as well say I suffered on 2-3 passages!! We all meet up at the Pombie refuge for a little time to share, but there's no time to hang around too much, the road is still long until Batcrabère, our bivouac site... In total 42 kilometers and 3400 m+, but the numbers don't mean much with 7 hours of climbing, I can tell you that we weren't very talkative at the bivouac !
« D2 => Here we are, off to attack my favorite summit, the Balaïtous, via the 3 ridges (NW, Costerillou and Crête du diable). A magnificent but threatening sky worries us a little... Are the storms forecast for the afternoon already here?? 5 minutes later the rain appears, and after careful consideration we decide to turn back. No network to check the weather radars, it was the wisest decision for us, impossible to envisage a ridge race with wet rock... We will therefore take the classic paths, Col de la Pierre Saint Martin, Col de la Fache to the Wallon refuge to continue the adventure. Reaching Gavarnie for Summits Of My Heart remains the priority of the project.
We regretted our decision because the sun rose an hour later, but it was the most accurate decision at the time, given the information we had ...
« D3 => After a second, somewhat frustrating day, the French weather forecast for the day suggests a weather window for the morning and the hope of putting the rope somewhere other than on the bag and especially reaching the summit of Vignemale! In the early morning it's a cold shower, both literally and figuratively! The storm is already here, gusts of wind, rain, in short the only objective is to reach Gavarnie and even that, it won't be easy. At the Oulettes refuge we finally find a connection with the outside world. No one will climb to the summit, we go through the hourquette, Baysselance refuge and Gavarnie! We've been well beaten by the elements but we arrive at the Oussou dam, we pick up Camille and head for the finish.
It was very emotional to enter the village and meet up with a good part of the team. We certainly didn't achieve everything we wanted, but the solidarity around this project was incredible.
Thanks to the colossal work of Summits Of My Heart, which has raised enough funds, we can already announce that a child will be taken into care for an operation. Many people don't realize it, but it's so difficult to approach people to find patrons, much more so than to bring Gabas to Gavarnie ...
Photo credits: Tristan Buchot and Guillaume Soler