Beauty and the Beast: Hiking the GR20 in Corsica (Retrospective from September, 2015)

Cerro Castillo, Chile, November 28, 2015

When I was planning my farewell tour of Europe for the summer of 2015, one of the things that I knew had to be on the itinerary was hiking the famed GR20 trekking route in Corsica.  I’d heard it being talked about for years by hikers, often in hushed tones, and I thought it would make a fitting finale after several weeks of warming up for it by hiking in the Pyrenees. 

As detailed in the previous post, the best-laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley (as Robbie Burns said).  After Terri received the news of her unexpected (and very un-Swiss) last-minute rescheduling of her Swiss citizenship ceremony, originally scheduled for September 16^th but now postponed until September 30^th, we frantically rescheduled and rebooked and by the evening of September 3^rd we were in another 2-euro 2-hour bus from Gavarnie (where we had received the e-mail that put us into motion) to the nearest railhead at Tarbes and a cheap motel opposite the station. 

The next morning, September 4^th, we jumped on a morning train to Toulouse.  After leaving my big hiking backpack in a left-luggage office of Byzantine complexity and incompetence at the station, we headed into town on foot.  One major objective was to buy myself a new camera lens to replace my much-loved, much-used and now completely broken Nikon 18-200 lens that had seized up as we left Cauterets a few days before.  We tried a slick professional shop that didn’t have the 18-200, but had an even more impressive 18-300 mm lens.  I was sorely tempted, but the prospect of having to buy all new filters (the 18-300 had a different diameter) made me hesistate.

We strolled further into the lovely historic centre of Toulouse, past the impressive Romanesque Church of St. Sernin and past hordes of university students undergoing a frosh week treasure hunt/ritual humiliation.  The main pedestrian drag, rue du Taur (named after a gruesome martyrdom involving a bull), was a buzzing, lively spot and we had an unexpected Asian lunch that went down well.  I made a fruitless sortie to another camera shop, then walked with Terri down to the Garonne River.  I was struck by the bilingual street signs, written in both French and Languedoc (Occitan), the language of a civilization in southern France destroyed by northern knights in the Albigensian crusade.  Toulouse was an important Roman city (Tolosa) before becoming a major centre of troubadour culture and the capital of the Languedoc region.  It’s nice to see that heritage being promoted today in the city.

On our way back to the first camera shop, we blundered into an electronics megastore, FNAC.  They had a sale going on, and had the 18-200 mm lens in stock.  I bought it, got the VAT back and ended up saving a fair bit of money.  Satisfied with my new purchase, we collected my bag from the station and took the subway, tram and city bus out to our hotel near the airport.

Modern Toulouse revolves around Airbus, which has its main factory beside the airport.  Outside our hotel, hundreds of Airbus employees in high-visibility vests were cycling home from work.  We dined on pate, wine, cheese and baguettes in our hotel room and threw ourselves into bed early.

The next morning we caught the bus and tram out to the airport and got on our Volotea flight to Bastia.  I had never heard of the airline, a Spanish-based budget carrier, and it marked the first time that I had ever flown on (or even heard of) a Boeing 717; another money-saving feature was that most of the flight crew were mainland Chinese.  At Bastia airport, we tried futilely to hitchhike to Calvi before finally giving up and taking a long, slow bus-train combination.  During our three-hour wait in Bastia town, we bought a map and guidebook (to replace the ones left behind in Leysin for Terri to bring back from her citizenship ceremony trip), had lunch and then took a leisurely, spectacular train ride to Calvi, only slightly delayed by a large forest fire whipped up by the gale-force mistral wind.  We got to Calvi after dark, found a campground and went to bed.

Early the next morning, September 6^th, we crawled out of the tent, packed up rapidly and shared a truly exorbitant taxi with a Canadian couple, Maike and Brendan, to the trailhead at Calenzana.  For a 14 km ride that took about 12 minutes, the fare came to 50 euros.  In Corsica, as in much of the world, there are no poor cabdrivers.

The start of the trek was relatively straightforward, a 900-metre climb up a broad trail through typical lowland maquis vegetation to the Bocca u Saltu, a broad pass.  We had sweeping views down to the northwest coast, with Calvi a far-off citadel and the Mediterranean a still azure blue, yesterday’s gales completely gone. 

Terri on the first day, high above Calvi

After a lunch of sardines and bread, we set off on a long traverse and climb up through pine forests and over granite boulders to another pass, the Bocca a u Bazzuchellu.  There were sections of tricky scrambling and even a fixed chain at one part, making for some challenging manoeuvring while carrying a heavy pack. We took another break there before a final traverse, partly through a long stretch of burnt-out forsts, to the day’s refuge, l’Ortu di up Piobbu.  We were unpleasantly surprised to find almost every available tent site taken; September is supposed to be the off-season for the GR20, but apparently not this year.  As well, we learned that the previous day’s fires and winds had seen the first section of the trail officially closed, so there were two days’ worth of hikers setting out that day.  We eventually found a site quite far downhill from the hut, put up the tent, wandered uphill to the hut to sample some great cake, and then headed back to the tent for a great meal of roesti and sausage.  I was carrying more weight than almost any other hiker on the GR20, but at least it meant that we were eating better than most people.  We had a post-prandial taste of whiskey watching fog roll in, enveloping the granite peaks as the sun set.

First-night sunset

The second leg of the GR20 is where it starts to get serious.  The GR20 is often described as the most challenging long-distance hike in Europe, and it’s not because of horizontal distances covered, or vertical metres climbed.  Instead, it’s because of the relentless technical scrambling on several of the days, and this started right out of camp that day.  We rock-hopped and angled our way up big slabs of exposed rock all morning through a lovely birch forest.  Terri found it hard going, and I didn’t much enjoy having a heavy pack on my back for some of the trickier moves.  We topped out for the day at 2020m, lunched on sausage and peanuts and then headed into the mist for a long, tiring series of short, steep climbs.  We were almost alone, as we were more or less the last people out of camp in the morning after a leisurely breakfast of pancakes.  A party of Belgian students and a lone Israeli medical student caught up to us over the course of the afternoon, trekkers whom we would see over and over again during the coming days.  Finally, with Terri despairing of ever arriving, we slogged our unsteady way down an endless scree slope, rocks rolling underfoot constantly.

Seriously steep terrain on day two

We arrived to a scene reminiscent of this summer’s footage of Syrian refugees arriving in Europe.  The refuge, Carozzu, is located at a spot lacking in flat land, and every likely tent-sized spot was already taken. Just before dark, a young man dragged himself into camp, his knee cut to the kneecap and his wrist broken by a six-metre fall; he was evacuated the next morning after being stitched up by a doctor among the hikers.  We ended up staking out a narrow spot, too small to put up our tent, and sleeping out under the stars on our air mattresses.  Our sleeping bags were soon soaked with dew, although the moisture evaporated by the time we woke up the next morning.  The views of the stars, watching the Milky Way rotate slowly over our heads, were compensation for the lack of space. 

Light coming to the Spasimata gorge

We made a much more timely getaway the next morning, setting off before 8 o’clock thanks to Terri having mixed up some muesli the night before.  We knew that day three was supposed to be quite challenging, and we wanted to give ourselves enough daylight hours to complete it.  The fun and games began immediately, with a swaying suspension bridge, the Passerelle de Spasimata, to cross before we climbed steeply up a long box canyon, a route that involved lots of precarious scrambling on huge steeply inclined slabs of pink granite.  We were in a landscape of pure rock, almost unadulterated by the green of vegetation, tempered only by the crustal clear waters of the pools of water far below us in the bottom of the valley.  It was challenging going, with lots of hands-and-feet scrambling up very steep pitches.  Eventually we reached a tiny lake, near which I watched two moufflon (wild sheep) grazing on the opposite bank, looking for all the world like a pair of Thomson gazelle transplanted from Tanzania.  By the time I reached for my camera, the moufflon had slipped quietly into an adjoining patch of bush from which they did not reappear.

Really?  This is a trekking route?  Day three

We eventually, after almost four hours, made our way to the Bocca Muvrella, a pass with breathtaking views down both sides.  From there on, although we had little net vertical gain left, the day only got harder, with a tough downclimb followed by a rugged traverse to the last pass of the day, another Bocca whose name escapes me now.  At times we had to take off our backpacks and pass them down before climbing down gingerly.  Any misstep, while not necessarily fatal, would have meant a helicopter ride and lots of pain.  It was physically and mentally draining, and even the final downhill to the ski resort of Haut Asco was a long series of careful short steps on sliding scree.  It was a profound relief to walk into the pine forests of Asco and finally swing our legs freely and stride forward at a normal walking pace.  We camped in a beautiful spot that evening under pine trees, and slept the sleep of the dead.

On the way between passes, day three

The fabled fourth stage of the GR20, through the Cirque de Solitude, used to be the toughest stretch of the whole route.  However, in June this year a big landslide killed 6 hikers in the Cirque, leading the authorities to close this route.  The alternatives are a bus ride down and around the Cirque (and the next day’s stage too), or a long climb almost over the highest peak in Corsica, the Monte Cinto.  Shellshocked by the previous two days, we opted for the soft option, and at 9:00 the next morning we boarded a bus for a slightly hair-raising ride down the valley into the lowland town of Ponte Leccio, through which we had passed four days previously in the train.  A brief stop there allowed us to buy steak and eggs for a slap-up dinner, before a remarkable road led us up through the Scala de Santa Regina (“the staircase of Santa Regina), one narrow lane pushed thorugh a precipitous gorge.  It was slightly white-knuckle stuff, with our driver aggressively forcing her way past befuddled German tourists, but we suddenly emerged into an inland highland basin, the Niolo, and hopped off the bus in Albertacce at 11:30 ready to walk.  The other hikers—Celine (one of the Belgian students), Alban (a middle-aged Frenchman from Grenoble) with his 71-year-old father and 68-year-old uncle, and a Swiss student—soon left us behind, but Terri and I didn’t mind.  We were revelling in the walk, through pine forests and open, rocky chaparral reminiscent of Montana.  It was a joy to be able to stride along without constantly looking at our feet.  We barely noticed the 600 metres of climbing, and got to Castellu di Vergio, another ski resort, in enough time to take steaming hot showers and do laundry.  It felt like trekking the way we were both used to.

Terri enjoying the easier walking on day four near Albertacce

The one thing that continued not to feel like trekking was my left hip.  Every night my hip locked up completely, and I could barely get to my feet.  Getting out of the tent was an inelegant affair, as I crawled like a commando through the door, rolled onto my side and slowly got my right foot under me.  Finally, with agonizing slowly, I would straighten my left leg, wincing in pain and hobble around.  After half an hour, I would be able to walk, and during the day my mobility wasn’t too badly impaired, but rock climbing the toughest parts of the route was slow and painful.  I was at a loss what to do; I took ibuprofen and aspirin, but this did little to make whatever was wrong get better, and the next morning I would be doing my imitation of a 90-year-old once again.

A distant view of Ajaccio and its coastline

Col de San Pietru, above Castellu Vergio

The feeling continued the next day as we covered more distance on the map than ever before on wide, easy trails leading to a lovely alpine tarn, the Lac de Ninu.  It was surrounded by pozzini, the flat grasslands so prized by Corsican herdsmen (perhaps because they’re so rare!).

Terri and tiny equine friend, Lac de Ninu

The horses grazing beside the lake reminded me forcefully of a wonderful trip through Mongolia back in 2007.  A sun-soaked picnic beside the lake and we were off for an afternoon of quick walking through a landscape of amazing dead trees looking very Ansel Adams-esque, finally climbing to a cheerful (but still overcrowded) campsite at Mangannu, where we met a number of groups who had walked over the Cirque de Solitude and then done a double stage to catch up to us. 

Day five scenery

Strangely, although it was by far the easiest walking of the route so far, Terri complained that evening of a sore left ankle and shin.  We knew that the next day was going to be our last stage of tough scrambling, so we studied the map for alternative routes, but they involved enormously long marches around the mountains, so Terri decided to tough it out for another day.

It was, as advertised, a long hard slog form Mangannu to Pietra Piana.  We climbed steeply out of camp, up, up, up to a narrow gap in a steep arête.  So far the footing had been fine, but the subsequent series of traverses and short up-and-down pitches was really hard, with lots of scrambling on all fours, hopping across boulderfields and occasionally lowering our packs down in front of us.  With her sore leg, this was a painful day for Terri, reducing her to tears at one point.

The scenery was stunning, looking down on a series of tiny jewel-like lakes surrounded by a chaos of rock faces and rockfalls.  Eventually we made one final traverse, climbed past a tiny hidden meadow, over a final ridge and saw the refuge directly below us.  The clouds, mist and threat of rain that had dogged us all day dissipated and we arrived in bright sunshine at the best campsite of the hike.  Our tent site was below and away from the main cluster, perched on the edge of a cliff giving epic views down the valley and over the next day’s route.  It was a wonderful place to watch the setting sun light distant peaks aflame while sipping some of the local wine sold by the hutkeeper.

Last evening of camping, Pietra Piana

The view from Pietra Piana

Terri’s foot was now much worse, with either tendinitis or a sprain the likeliest culprits.  We decided to avoid the long two-stages-in-one-day march that most of our fellow hikers were planning, and instead follow the river valley all the way down to a roadhead.  It was a good choice, both for the relative ease of walking and for the stunning river.  We hiked past a series of perfect swimming holes, each more perfect than the previous one, and finally took the plunge in a secluded pool.  It was chilly water, but it felt wonderful on our unwashed skin, and the granite boulders lining the pool made it easy to bask in the sun afterwards and warm up. 

Lovely swimming pools on the last day

Eventually we passed a small bergerie where we shared a beer and tasted the local sheep’s cheese before an endless plod past more bathing spots brought us finally to the road at the tiny hamlet of Caniglia.  By now Terri could hardly walk because of the pain in her leg, and a French couple in a camper van took pity on us and gave us a lift to the main highway at Vivariu.  It was a long hobble to the train station, but by 6:30 we were in the old inland capital Corte.  We planned to take a day off to recover and to celebrate my 47^th birthday on September 13^th, but after a visit to the hospital the next day, punctuated by a dramatic encounter with a histrionic shouting nurse, we were both ordered to cease and desist from hiking for at least a week.  My sciatica, which had been with me all trip, suddenly took a big turn for the worse on that last day, and I was hobbling as badly as Terri.  Our GR20 was over at the halfway mark.  At least we had completed the harder half of the route before quitting.

My overall take on the GR20 is that it lives up to its mystique, but not in the way I expected.  The toughness of the walk is not in its vertical metres climbed, or its horizontal kilometres covered.  It’s in the technical challenges of scrambling and semi-rock climbing with a full backpack, and in the very real physical risk of a slip or a tumble, as well as the mental stress of doing this on every step for hours on end.  The three non-technical days we did (Albertacce-Castellu Vergio on day 4, Castellu Vergio-Mangannu on day 5 and our walk out on day 7) were joys:  easy walking with great views.  I suspect that the southern half of the walk would have been like this too.  The legendary technical stages, origin of the GR20’s hair-raising reputation, are a do-able challenge, with stunning views, but the mental grind of having to choose every foothold and handhold with care detracts a bit from the fun of walking in the mountains.  I greatly preferred the walking we did in the Pyrenees.

The other part of the GR20 that is sub-par is accommodation, with overcrowded refuges that charge very high prices for everything and have dubious sanitation and not enough space (in most cases) for tents.  The GR20 is a victim of its own popularity in this respect. 

Would I come back to finish the GR20 in the future?  Maybe, although it’s not at the top of my to-do list.