A meander above Soulcem

Hot again today. Time for an outing. The area further on from the Vicdessos Valley and Auzat is an area that we have not yet explored, which is bizarre seeing as it is an area of great interest for the outdoors person.... it has two 3000m peaks (Pic d'Estats and Montcalm) and is also home to the peaks which border Andorra on one side of the Etang de Soulcem and those that border Spain on the other! But today, we had modest aspirations with a nice circuit planned first up to the Etangs de Gardelle (2400m) then on to the Etang de Rouzamet followed by the Etang de la Soucaranne before returning to the Orris de Carla at the head of the Etang de Soulcem.

As soon as we left the car, we were hit by a steep ascent which pretty much followed the line of the torrent that you can see here, starting from left of the photo...The view back down to the Etang was impressiveAs we progressed, we could see the Pointe de Razamet looming above what we assumed were the Etangs that we were aiming for. It is a fantastically wild landscape up there! However, as we reached 2200m where the route branched off up the hillside to our left, it became apparent that our progress was about to be quite rudely curtailed due to the snow that remained on the ground. We had set out equipped with our running gear and had rather naively not imagined that enough snow would remain to cause us a problem. But we were wrong as this NW facing slope shows
We had no option but to retrace our steps and start the steep descent back down to the Etang and the car. But we had climbed 640m over a distance of just 3 kms so it had been worthwhile. It will be good to make a return visit in August/September when the snows have fully melted and hopefully we will be able to ascend to the Etangs de Gardelle which look like they will be worth the trip;