Canyoneering in Sierra de Guara (31 images)

Canyoneering in Sierra de Guara

Down the Pyrenees, the Sierra de Guara presents its rocky bowels to the ones practising canyoneering. Well-equiped and guided, we follow the current in the canyons and the "barrancos", discovering a mineral universe made of waterfalls, basins and tight gorges.

Pleated, tortured, rubbed and sculpted by the spring tides of the "rios", the Sierra de Guara is a soul-devasting land. In the sixties, the roughness and the...
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Canyoneering in Sierra de Guara

Down the Pyrenees, the Sierra de Guara presents its rocky bowels to the ones practising canyoneering. Well-equiped and guided, we follow the current in the canyons and the "barrancos", discovering a mineral universe made of waterfalls, basins and tight gorges.

Pleated, tortured, rubbed and sculpted by the spring tides of the "rios", the Sierra de Guara is a soul-devasting land. In the sixties, the roughness and the austerity of its calcareous mountains forced a lot of families to exodus, left setting out in search of more fertile lands. But today, this is its baroque savagery and the mineral extravagance of its canyons that attract the nature bewildered and the mads about canyoneering. Helmet on the head, neoprene diving suit slipped on and ropes on the back, we are seven to keep wavering on the flagstones scrapped by the passing of herds, and canalized by secular "tapias" (walls of dry stones). In the back, the village of Rodellar and its bell tower stand by the entrance of the Mascun canyon. End of a world and beginning of a new universe. In front of us: mineral, stony, rocky ! A calcareous obsession has forged natural citadels into the white and ocre cliffs bristling with peaks, spines and arches. Downhill, the limpid water of the rio slopes down to a mass of pebbles, comes to a stop for a while in a deep basin before taking back its course

Wherever you are in the Sierra de Guara, a mysterious aura seems to be flying over the canyons.
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