Walking and Trekking in the Sierra Nevada. Richard Hartley
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WALKING AND TREKKING IN THE SIERRA NEVADA
by Richard Hartley
JUNIPER HOUSE, MURLEY MOSS,
OXENHOLME ROAD, KENDAL, CUMBRIA LA9 7RL
About the Author
Richard Hartley started walking in the UK hills in the mid 1970s. In the 1980s and 1990s he spent many seasons walking and mountaineering in the Alps. Since then he has led six expeditions to the Patagonian Icecap and joined a Berghaus-sponsored expedition in 2013 to ski volcanoes in Kamchatka.
In 1998 he quit his job as an accountant in search of a better life and found it in the Sierra Nevada where he has lived since 2002, just outside the spa town of Lanjarón in the Alpujarras. He is the owner of a local tour and guiding company, ‘Spanish Highs, Sierra Nevada’ (www.spanishhighs.co.uk). They run walking, trekking, mountaineering, snowshoeing and ski touring trips into the mountains of the Sierra Nevada, and further afield organise regular expeditions to the Southern Patagonian Icecap.
© Richard Hartley 2017
First edition 2017
ISBN: 978 1 85284 917 7
Printed by KHL Printing, Singapore
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
All photographs are by the author unless otherwise stated.
Contains OpenStreetMap.org data © OpenStreetMap contributors, CC-BY-SA. NASA relief data courtesy of ESRI
Acknowledgements
Mention must be made of the writer of the previous editions of this guide, Andy Walmsley, who published the guide in 1996 with a revision in 2006. These books have spent countless hours accompanying me around the hills of the Sierra Nevada. They also provided much-needed inspiration and ideas as I sat around a winter fireside. My sincere hope is that this current guidebook can continue his excellent work.
Walking companions Javier Aguirrebengoa, Felipe Nieto Conejero, Clive Fenn, Jens Foell, Victoria Bocanegra Montañes, Andrew Phillips and Ian Tupman provided assistance with photos, route-checking and route choice. Ian Tupman also proofread and highlighted errors in the text.
Local expert Pepe Badaje added information and history about the unguarded refuges. Carol and Stan Byrne gave me information about the fiesta dates in the Alpujarras. The climate section was checked by weather expert Stephanie Ball of MeteoGib.
The ‘Plants and wildlife’ section was provided by my wife, Kiersten Rowland, and illustrated with her wonderful photos. She and my daughter, Emma Hartley, also ran the office for long periods whilst I had my head immersed in files and maps. This was invaluable as they removed the few remaining excuses I had to get down to some hard graft.
Thanks to the Hotel España and ‘Sabores de las Alpujarras’ in Lanjarón for allowing me to use their excellent facilities to spread out the maps, use my laptop, and for keeping me supplied with a seemingly constant stream of coffee or cold beer!
And of course, thanks to Jonathan Williams at Cicerone Press for his guidance, patience and understanding over the years.
Dedicated to my father for introducing me as a 10 year old to the wonders of the hills in the first place.
Updates to this Guide
While every effort is made by our authors to ensure the accuracy of guidebooks as they go to print, changes can occur during the lifetime of an edition. Any updates that we know of for this guide will be on the Cicerone website (www.cicerone.co.uk/917/updates), so please check before planning your trip. We also advise that you check information about such things as transport, accommodation and shops locally. Even rights of way can be altered over time.
The route maps in this guide are derived from publicly-available data, databases and crowd-sourced data. As such they have not been through the detailed checking procedures that would generally be applied to a published map from an official mapping agency, although naturally we have reviewed them closely in the light of local knowledge as part of the preparation of this guide.
We are always grateful for information about any discrepancies between a guidebook and the facts on the ground, sent by email to [email protected] or by post to Cicerone, Juniper House, Murley Moss, Oxenholme Road, Kendal LA9 7RL, United Kingdom.
Register your book: To sign up to receive free updates, special offers and GPX files where available, register your book at www.cicerone.co.uk.
Front cover: First winter snows on the north faces of Alcazaba and Mulhacén from the Loma de los Cuartos (Route 28)
CONTENTS
Mulhacén and Alcazaba overview map