Hiking the Pyrenees: Busted Knees on Day Three

Okay I think it's time to blast through the remainder of this Pyrenees hike in Andorra, and be done with it once and for all.

The Moldy Pond from my last post was connected to a series of other ponds that made up a much larger body of water called Etang du Siscar.

Flowing streams of mountain snow melt poured from one pond into the next, creating larger and larger pools as they traveled down the hillside.

The landscape around the stream was lush and green and full of vibrant plant life.

This particular pond in the photos didn't have its own specific name that I could find, but it proved to be a great location to photograph the clouds reflecting off its surface.

We walked around it and continued on down the mountain without much delay.

This day actually proved to be quite challenging for me and things only got worse as the day progressed.

I pushed myself quite hard the day before, hiking for 11 hours or so, walking approximately 34km and gaining 720 flights of stairs.

It all proved to be a bit too much for me given that I hadn't trained or anything prior to our trip to Andorra.

I could feel it in my knees the next day as soon as we started out in the morning.

They felt weak, like the one could give out at any moment while walking, so I put on a knee brace immediately after leaving our refuge and hoped for the best.

At this point we were only about an hour or 2 into our hike though, and I still felt relatively okay, especially once the adrenaline and endorphins kicked in from the exertion of hiking.

Our refuge was basically located at the top of the mountain though, so the majority of the hike was almost entirely downhill.

That was very bad for me given my situation. The relentless hammering on my knees had a sort of compounding effect as the day went on, wearing them out and making them feel more and more painful.

Side note: here we are at the begining of Etang du Siscar.

We followed a small path around the lake.

It was quite pretty.

But then, all of the other mountain lakes that we had encountered during the trip were also quite pretty.

Okay back to my knee situation.

I'm not sure exactly where or when it happened but at some point along the way everything took a drastic turn for the worse.

Both knees were in pain but the one was really severe to the point where I didn't want to walk on it at all for fear of completely tearing the ligaments.

But then I also realized that I was on a mountain, hours away from civilization or any sort of help, with a train ride home booked for that evening...

Stopping wasn't really an option so I had to just power through and hope for the best.

But I did slow way down. Actually, it was really hard to keep up with my hiking companion.

My friend ended up giving me an Advil or Tylenol for the pain, but I didn't want to take too much because for fear that the pain would subside and I would completely wreck myself by unknowingly push myself too hard.

I opted for one Tylenol, which did nothing, and just winced with every step down the mountain.

I also prayed for uphill hiking because it was better on my joints than down.

Unfortunately there was almost no uphill walking at that point other than a few places for short distances.

Even the nearly flat terrain was a nightmare for me. The gentle decline still hurt quite a bit and also made my friend move faster, which made me move faster to try and catch up. _{P.S. try and spot Leaky in the photo below}

Eventually, I just couldn't bend my knee at all and just walked as stiff legged as possible.

I eventually found a walking stick on the path, which I used like a crutch for the remainder of the day.

My friend was probably annoyed as hell with how slow I was going because I was like that (walking straight legged with a crutch) for a minimum or 2-3 hours of our 6 hour hike that day.

The scenery remained a beautiful as ever though. Unfortunately I took less and less photos as the day went on because I was moving too slow to stop, so many of the photos were taken by my friend _{which is why I'm in many of them.}.

This spot was called Barrage du Sisca.

You probably guessed that it translates to, Sisca Dam.

After the dam we were starting to get close to the train station. Thank God.

I could actually see it off in the distance.

It was maybe an hour more of steep downhill at this point though.

It's always a good sign when you start to see markers with your actual destination on them.

All in all the hike took us 6 hours in total from our refuge in Andorra to the train station in L'Hospitalet France.

It would be a great hike to do in reverse to, if you wanted to start at the station and hike across the border to Refuge du Jucla.

When we arrived in town we had several hours to kill before the night train left back to Paris, so we stopped at a restaurant and treated ourselves to some food and beers.

It took about 2 weeks for me to be able to walk somewhat normally again but stairs remained an issue for a few weeks after that. I'm pretty sure I had done some permanent damage to it because I'm still periodically having issues even now, half a year later. I've been strengthening the muscles around the knee, which has helped a lot but I still get major pains in different parts periodically, especially when using stairs or anything beyond normal walking activity. It hasn't stopped me from hiking entirely though, I just try not to push myself to such extremes anymore and try to be diligent about strengthening my leg muscles to take pressure off the joint itself.

Well thats it for our hike in the Pyrenees Mountains of Andorra. Until next time, thanks for stopping by.