Trekking through a living mountain culture: Spain’s Picos de Europa

Halfway across a glacial hollow I stand on a patch of snow and watch a spider dash across frozen crystals, then find the slope awash with tiny alpine flowers alive with bees and crickets. A pair of chamois watches from a crag before clattering up an almost vertical face; I pause to put on a jacket, reminding myself I am in Spain during a European heatwave.

Ahead, my group are dots snaking up a rock wall toward a surprising refuge: Cabin Verónica, a gun turret cut from the USS Pulau in 1961 at a Bilbao breakers’ yard and dragged up here by mule. The custodian, Jorge, took it on eight years ago and has made it his summer home, adding solar power and water tanks; “I love it,” he says while making coffee.

Below, a bearded vulture soars, one of a small number successfully reintroduced in 2005. The Picos rise to more than 2,500m and are famed for steep slopes, unique flora and fauna, a chamois subspecies, bears and wolves, and an underworld of rivers and caverns almost a mile deep.

Spain, Picos de Europa

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