Euforia Ultra Trail (Andorra 233 km, 20000 m D+)

Posted on January 6th, 2020

Words & Photos: Filippo Canetta

Let's start from the end.

Ordino (Andorra), Saturday, July 20, 2019, 10:19 pm

"Roby, hand me your phone." "Here." "What name did you save my number under?" "Filo, why?" "I need to delete it, so next time you get the bright idea to call me about something like this again, you call someone else instead."

Here are the numbers: we've just covered 233 km with 20,000 m of elevation gain. It took us 86 hours to complete the loop around the Principality of Andorra, climbing and descending every one of its peaks, following a GPS track. Five summits above 2,900 m, twenty-two above 2,500 m, with an average elevation of 2,200 m. We slept one hour and fifteen minutes over three and a half days. Yes, "we," because this race is run in pairs, and if one doesn't finish, neither does the other. I've known Roberto for years, together we've covered countless kilometers, gotten ourselves into all kinds of trouble out on the trails, and always found our way out. Together with him and Luca, in 2018 I completed the PTL course, one of the toughest Endurance Trail races out there (story here).

But numbers never quite do justice to what actually happened.

Wednesday, July 17, 2019, 9:49 pm

We stumble, spent, into the first life base. The last hour has gone by in silence, both of us determined to quit but too afraid to admit it to the other. It's taken us over fifteen hours to cover forty-seven kilometers. The signals our bodies are sending us are all bad. Usually, it's one of us feeling rough while the other's still doing fine, in which case it's just a passing crisis, one you push through by shutting out the negative thoughts and tucking in behind whoever's feeling stronger. This time, though, we're both wrecked, the exhaustion we came looking for turned out to be far greater than we'd bargained for. Above 2,000 m, we struggle to breathe, our thigh muscles burn with every uphill step, and downhill isn't any better, we simply can't run. We've already fallen several times, and I even snapped a pole sliding across a scree field (the scrape on my backside isn't going away anytime soon). Everyone else seems so much fresher and more agile than us. Facing each other, we stare, for more than half an hour, shaking our heads in turn, trying to figure out what's wrong without finding an answer. Eventually, we have to face the obvious: we weren't ready for this. Almost simultaneously, we utter the fateful words no ultra trail runner ever wants to say: "We're dropping out, that's it, we're stopping here."

When we walked into the refuge, there'd been barely anyone there, just two other teams, a good moment to quit and enjoy the peace of the place. Now, though, it's filled up, competitors, family members, volunteers. Plenty of people are dropping out. Everyone's stirred up, creating chaos, the noise nearly deafening. Roberto and I look at each other again, and, with a half-smile, without saying a word, since words aren't needed when you understand each other, we get up and walk out, into the quiet night.

In the darkness, we have to stay focused, following the GPS track, careful not to take a wrong turn. It helps us stop thinking, stop calculating our pace times. If you don't do the math, you can't get it wrong, and it can't crush your expectations. Besides, the real reckoning always comes at the end anyway. But that's easy to forget.

Thursday, July 18, 2019, 3:40 am

100 m left to the summit of Comapedrosa, the race's highest point. I've always heard this legendary peak spoken of as one of the darkest beasts among all the trails. Luckily, in the darkness, I couldn't actually see the wall of stone and rock we've been scrambling up for over two hours now. 1,600 m of elevation gain over three kilometers, only 100 left, we stop to catch our breath, like mountaineers on an eight-thousander. We push on. Past the first col, a strong wind picks up, and, in unison, we take off our backpacks and put on our jackets. I'd already noticed this back at PTL, there comes a point where a team starts moving like a single organism. We don't even need to say anything, we just do things simultaneously. Maybe to avoid the extra effort of putting on pants too, we pick up the pace instead, just to avoid getting too cold. We quickly reach the summit, and, not wanting to give it too much credit, we arrogantly turn our backs on it and push on toward the next peak.

Dawn is slow to arrive, but the moment we switch off our headlamps, the view of the Pyrenees' immense amphitheater of peaks is breathtaking. Staying up high the whole way, we've lost sight of the insignificant valley that forms the country's urbanized backbone.

I turn to Robi, climbing behind me, and gesture for him to turn around too. He stops, leans on his poles, and, in a state of pure awe, takes in the spectacle unfolding before us.

After all these years, I still haven't figured out whether we suffer through so much just for moments like this: but it's precisely in instants like this one that I feel alive. We look at each other, eyes shining with joy, for a second, then, muttering a curse, we resume the climb, hunched over our poles. I yell at him to go to hell: I've watched more sunrises with him than with my own wife.

Thursday, July 18, 2019, 1:00 pm

The temperature's unbearable now, we're in the hottest part of the day, and we've been descending for two hours toward the race's lowest point. Going downhill, my legs are burning. After a day and a half spent above 2,000 meters, dropping down to 900 feels like a pointless waste of energy. By now we've figured out how things work around here, nights are damp, cold and windy, days hot and sunny. We reach the second life base already knowing it'll be brutal leaving the gym behind to tackle the 1,800 m climb waiting for us, so we play our shower card before heading back out. Still wet, without hesitating, we throw ourselves onto the scorching stretch of pavement leading out of town, within ten minutes we've dried off, and started sweating again. Instinctively, our first worry turns to our water supply, and we start rationing it. We try to move slowly, at a steady pace, knowing there's no other option but to climb, up toward cooler temperatures.

Thursday, July 18, 2019, 6:50 pm

We've been dreaming for at least four hours now of a sweet, fizzy drink, but the moment we hit a refuge, we'll buy a whole case, we tell each other. Oddly, the climb we're on turns out fairly straightforward, we don't need to worry much about technical sections or complicated turns in the GPS track. The tension eases, and exhaustion takes hold of our bodies, and, as if in a dream, we spot a beautiful stone house. It looks well kept, surely there's someone there with a nice, sweet, fizzy drink waiting for us.

We discover, then, that Andorra doesn't have refuges the way we'd imagined, staffed, with a restaurant and beds, every building along the way is just that, a genuine mountain refuge, with nothing more than a table and rusty iron cots. In a self-supported race like this (aside from the life bases), that's something to factor in, especially in late July, particularly for water supplies. We'll spend two more days drinking straight from streams, creeks, and puddles. The disappointment's so heavy we don't know what to do, we try lying down on the iron bed frames, being in a room with a roof over our heads feels strange. I can't sleep, and I don't think Roberto managed to either, after a few minutes we put our shoes back on and head out, it starts raining, and we push on with the climb.

The landscape turns almost lunar, vegetation has vanished entirely.

Before long, we're swallowed in fog, and it becomes really hard to follow the GPS track, we can't understand why we keep drifting off route. After a lot of scrambling around, we find ourselves right on the edge of a cliff, the track's telling us that's the way to go. If this had been PTL, we wouldn't have doubted it for a second, but up to now the Eiger Ultra Trail's track had always been clear and logical, and we'd never really had major doubts. As always happens in moments like this, the stars aren't aligning in our favor. The fog thickens, if we drift apart even slightly, we lose sight of each other. The wind's cold, making it hard to think clearly about what to do. It's starting to get dark. Struggling, we layer up with everything we have and cautiously start trying to descend the drop. We think we spot some tracks, and go down "surfing" over loose rock, sliding along with gravel and stones. After a few hundred meters, we both realize this can't possibly be the right way. Below us, nothing but void, nothing visible at all. Planting our poles into the gravel, I decide to call race control. It's the last resort, when you truly have no idea what else to do. Seeing our GPS tracker's position, they should be able to tell us which way to go. I grab onto a rock, call, they pick up quickly, great, they tell us they're receiving our GPS signal, but it's twenty minutes delayed, and we need to turn the transponder off and back on. We try, but maybe because our fingers are frozen, we can't get it to turn back on. Not good. Second call, after a few curses the line drops, out of credit. How's that even possible? I'd specifically bought a local SIM card! (We'll later find out we were actually in France, and cross-border calls cost something like ten euros a minute.) Race control never calls back. We're right back where we started. We climb back up the drop, since it's impossible to hold contracted muscles standing still on such a steep slope. Finally, I manage to switch the GPS back on, but I realize I've lost my gloves, and I look at Robi with a desperate expression. In critical moments, your brain works far faster, tapping into hidden reserves of energy. I know there's no other option but to climb back down to look for them, I can't keep going without them. Hoping, in the fog, to retrace the exact spot where I'd stopped, I throw myself down the descent and quickly reach the same spot, I find my own tracks, the pole holes still punched into the ground, but no gloves. I scream at the top of my lungs into the fog, when I realize I'd actually tucked them into my pants pocket, specifically so I wouldn't lose them. I climb back up to Roberto, fury in my legs, half-frozen, still trying to find the trail that doesn't exist. I take off my shoes, full of rocks, without the courage to tell him where the gloves had actually been. 500-600 calories, wasted for nothing. We try calling control on the transponder's intercom, and, oddly enough, they pick up this time, but keep insisting we're heading the right way. We switch on our headlamps, and as we scan the wall of white fog surrounding us, as if by magic, we spot two lights approaching us. We run toward them like they're angels fallen from the sky. They're two German guys who, shattering our self-confidence in two seconds flat, show us there's a beautiful trail, just fifty meters from us, descending right off that damned mountain. We'll only find out later they'd already scouted the route beforehand.

Friday, July 19, 2019, 2:30 am

The tension eases, and at some point Robi calls for a sleep timeout. We lie down under a tree. We've dropped in altitude, and the night's now mild and calm, we try to sleep a few minutes, Robi sets the alarm, as always. Ever since I was a kid, I've always struggled to fall asleep, especially when I know I've got a strict number of minutes to do it in. Knowing I've only got fifteen, I don't even bother trying, I just watch the branches of the tree sheltering us, swaying in the summer breeze, still a good night regardless. Behind me, I hear Robi grumbling, and quickly figure out why, a swarm of hungry mosquitoes has decided to ruin our moment of relaxation. We set off again, groggy and bitter. After all, this is our second sleepless night, and we're still holding up fine, finally settling into the spirit of races like this one. Whatever happens shouldn't be seen as a major problem, but as a small, insignificant hiccup that doesn't affect the final result, all that matters is keep moving, closing the gap between us and the finish.

Finally, the second night is drawing to a close, the horizon above the mountains is already brighter, tracing out their outline. We find ourselves in a beautiful grassy plain, the trail passing near a tiny stone hut, its doorway so low we have to bend our legs and take off our backpacks just to get through. Inside, someone's laid wooden planks over part of the dirt floor, the air smells of wood and smoke, probably a shepherd's shelter used by locals. After forty-six hours, it feels like the suite at Zermatt's Grand Hotel, and it's the perfect spot for our first official nap, the thirty-minute one. I'm tired too by now, and, within moments of lying down, I fall asleep, a deep, peaceful sleep, the kind that genuinely restores you.

Cursing, bent double on aching legs, trying to squeeze back out of our little house, our German friends pass by, watching us with clear amusement. Sunrise warmth on our skin feels wonderful, and we head off into a new day.

Friday, July 19, 2019, 8:00 am

When Graziana and Rossana (who unfortunately dropped out right where we too had considered quitting) catch up with us to run the last stretch before the third life base together, a brief burst of euphoria takes hold of us, their smiles push us to run faster than we probably should, and, without even noticing, we arrive at the life base. Just before heading in, we take a moment to cool off in a stream. We're not even halfway there yet, and a few minutes of relief, feet in cool water, can work wonders.

The second base, set up in the village nursery school, is very welcoming. We run into the German pair again, whom we've shared several stretches of the course with over the past hours. We exchange a shy smile, acknowledging the shared brutality of the course. Here too, no words are needed, as if the constant hardship has stripped us of speech entirely. We're the only competitors inside the little classroom, which gives us a chance to take stock of the situation. Our friends are extremely organized, following a precise plan, while we live everything much more #whateverdammit-style, but we've got a wildcard on our side. Alberto, Graziana's husband, who follows her on all her adventures, is the undisputed king of aid station support. He's come to find us with two bags stuffed full of everything a poor pilgrim, two days out on the trail, could possibly want. Since the girls dropped out, they've handed over their entire supply to us. We're not used to this kind of generosity, and reluctantly accept warm broth, a can of meat, and excellent freshly brewed coffee. The kind of stuff that could raise the dead. The canned meat turns out to be a stroke of genius, gently warmed, the gelatin melts in your mouth, letting us swallow it without any effort. In fact, one of the problems I'd been having up to now was that, breathing hard because of the altitude, my mouth had dried out, making it really hard to swallow food. The canned meat, though, goes down beautifully, and we ask for a couple more cans to take with us before setting off again. And there goes breakfast too. When day and night start blending into one another, eating patterns shift too. After two and a half days in nature, we've reverted purely to our most basic instincts: sleep when you can't stay awake anymore, eat when you're hungry.

Friday, July 19, 2019, 9:00 pm

For two hours now, we've been staring at the refuge on the other side of the valley, or rather, what we're convinced is the refuge we need to reach, but instead of heading straight there, we climb the mountain along the opposite slope, drifting further from our destination. We're exhausted, no longer thinking clearly, sixty-four hours in now. It feels like chasing a firefly through the night, like some nightmare, where the closer we get, the further away it seems to drift. Finally, after another two hours, the route leads us across the valley floor, to start climbing back up on the opposite slope from the one we came from. The climb is a genuine nightmare, entirely along ski slopes, through tall grass. We move painfully slowly, stopping constantly. It's starting to get cold, and we know we can't afford to stop and rest. Reaching the first ski station, as always at this hour, a strong headwind greets us, deepening that endless feeling of never quite reaching the life base. It's like being stuck inside a wind tunnel, we're putting in enormous effort but going nowhere at all.

At one point, fog catches us off guard, and we struggle to figure out how to actually reach the refuge, even though it's right there in front of us, maybe five hundred meters as the crow flies. I stop to put my pants on, trying to keep the wind from ripping them out of my hands, and when I stand back up, Robi's gone. I have no idea where he's disappeared to, I shout, uselessly, since no one can hear me anyway. I don't know what to do, unsure which way he's headed. We've stayed close together this whole time, and right now I feel a bit lost, alone. Do I go looking for him, risking getting lost myself, or head toward the refuge, hoping he's gone the right way? I push toward the refuge, but staying slightly higher than the marked track, to improve my chances of intercepting him. Luckily, after a few minutes, I find him wandering the slope, coming down from higher up. We meet on the final ramp before the ski station where the life base is set up. We walk in and find all our friends again, the two German guys, and Graziana, Rossana and Alberto, who've hiked all the way up on foot just to see us, we're moved, and it all feels almost excessive, as if we were winning the race, not barely surviving it. We eat something and, probably discouraged by the awful weather outside the refuge's windows, decide to sleep for forty-five minutes while waiting for dawn.

Saturday, July 20, 2019, 5:00 am

In competitions like this, it's strange how little it takes to completely flip the situation around. A few minutes of sleep, a bit of food, the dawn of a new day, and that's enough to send us off again, literally running. Less than sixty kilometers remain, and we know that, if all goes well, this will be our final day on Andorra's trails. The finish isn't close, but it's much closer than it's felt at any point over these past days, and that alone sends a powerful signal to our brains. This is a race where managing your own strength and limits is essential. Pacing your energy isn't easy, you have to listen both to your body's internal signals and to the external ones the course's difficulty throws at you. Right now, the energy balance our brains are calculating looks positive. We're fired up, joking cheerfully about every difficulty we've overcome. In fact, we're so fired up that we climb a slope at a pace we haven't managed in the past two days. What a view from up here, we say to each other. A perfect moment, both of us full of strength, on a mountain, morning sun kissing our faces, what more could you want from life? Unfortunately, the perfect moment lasts only a few seconds, just long enough for us to realize we're on the wrong mountain, the one we're actually supposed to climb is the one we're staring right at, across the way. I have to admit, it was a hard blow, even for two old ultra trail runners like us. Discouraged and in disbelief, we descend and try climbing back up the correct side, but the burst of euphoria is gone.

The finish creeps closer, slowly, and it's far from guaranteed, one moment of distraction is all it takes to lose your way. Sleep deprivation has left us less capable of making rational decisions, as if we're now driven mainly by emotions rising too easily to the surface. Climbing that mountain had felt right, so we'd climbed it, without ever checking whether it was actually the correct one. Paradoxically, though, we're physically in better shape now than we were on the first day. Our bodies have adapted to the effort, to the altitude, recovering that ancient capacity that once let our ancestors track down food through persistence hunting. We too chase our prey with determination, even if, sometimes, we lose the trail along the way.

Saturday, July 20, 2019, 1:00 pm

Once again, we leave behind the high ground we've grown so used to by now, dropping into the valley. Once again, we do it during the hottest hours. We drop from 2,700 m all the way down to 1,000 m, in the valley floor, knowing the long descent will be brutal on our already aching legs, knowing the climb back up will be long and grueling, but we've got a plan: find a supermarket and raid it for every fizzy, sugary drink they've got. This simple little scheme helps us stop dwelling on the pain and heat. It really doesn't take much to distract our minds, disconnect them from our bodies. I know it might sound contradictory, dreaming about one of those drinks known for damaging entire populations with their sugar content, but after three days of nonstop march, two hundred kilometers, twenty thousand meters of climbing, we feel like we're entitled to one moment of weakness. Naturally, there isn't a single supermarket anywhere along the race route, so we're forced to take a detour, to reach a gas station with a mini-mart. The moment we step through the door, our whole body lights up, feels like heaven, spread out in front of us, an entire wall of refrigerated cases, packed with the worst junk the entire confectionery industry has ever produced. We scoop up five, six cans each, and head to the register. We don't exactly look our best, and carrying that pile of cans, we look like a couple of drug addicts in the final stages. Luckily, the cashier knows about the race, and asks if we're competitors in the Ronda dels Cims (the 170 km race that started the day before, Friday), to justify our haul we explain we're actually running the Eiger Ultra Trail, having started Wednesday. The station's air conditioning might destabilize us, so we sit on the pump's steps to split up our hard-won bounty. It takes us a bit to decide the optimal order for downing all this liquid. By the fourth can each, we wisely decide to save one for the climb. After that, sitting with roughly four atmospheres of carbon dioxide in his stomach, Robi guzzles down a coffee-and-milk drink I hadn't even seen him buy. This is exactly the kind of thing that earns him all my respect. Fired up from having fulfilled our greatest dream, we cross the valley and start climbing up the opposite slope. First on pavement, then following a trail that's probably meant to be the village locals' shortest route up to the upper part of town. They've even built retaining steps, but the ground's made of slate-like rock fragments that slide loose with every step. We're certain no local has ever actually used that path, made even harder by the oppressive heat and the sun beating down on our backs. Before long, we're out of water, we hold steady, resisting the temptation to crack open our (last) can. It's a genuine ordeal, the heat's exposed every bit of our exhaustion, we're moving so slowly that the sun's practically cooking us alive with nothing we can do about it.

Finally, after a stretch of time that feels endless, we manage to reach Pic de Padern (funny enough, there's a Paderno near Milan too), at 1,857 m. We collapse under a tree, exhausted, crack open our can, and, with eyes nearly dead, look down at the town and its concrete sprawling below us.

Now, though, we've got a new problem, we're out of water. Up to this point, finding water had never really been an issue, the course had always been full of streams, springs, lakes, plenty of spots to refill our bottles, but on this side of the mountain there seems to be nothing at all. But isn't resilience, at its core, exactly the ability to hold onto motivation, without letting difficulty grind you down?

Throats parched, we walk a good stretch, trying not to make our thirst worse, and the moment we hear cars passing, we head toward the road. Luckily, we spot a camper van parked nearby. We approach and ask if, by any chance, they could spare us some water. The owners are busy talking with a group of cyclists at the roadside, and, barely paying attention, hand us a Coca-Cola bottle filled with clear liquid. We fill one bottle each, and drink straight from what's left in their bottle, only noticing, too late, that there are bits of food floating inside. Having spent three days drinking straight from the mountain, we're certainly not going to be bothered by a few food scraps in a bottle.

Saturday, July 20, 2019, 7:00 pm

Now that's a stroke of luck. For once, fortune favors the bold. We reach Col d'Ordino just as they're starting to dismantle the aid station set up for the other races, we technically wouldn't be entitled to anything, our race being self-supported, but pretending to lend a hand with the cleanup, we scarf down and swallow every scrap of leftovers we can grab. Grinning like someone who's just stolen Nutella from the pantry without getting caught, we start scrambling up Casamanya, the final mountain before the descent to the finish. It's eight hundred meters of elevation gain, but honestly, it could have been eight thousand for all we cared. We'd already passed through here on day one, in the opposite direction, what had felt like the race's first real difficulty back then now, bathed in orange sunset light, after nearly four days, feels like the most beautiful mountain in the world.

It's a moment of pure euphoria, well worth savoring, even at the cost of the clock ticking relentlessly on. We snap a few commemorative photos, the kind you'll one day show your grandkids, and stop to chat with a group of women whose goal for the day had been reaching that very summit. Naturally, we shamelessly lie about where we've come from, congratulate them, then begin the descent.

We reach the finish running. It's still a mystery to me just how much energy a body, exhausted as ours was, still had tucked away in reserve.

We cursed every climb, every descent, but each time we couldn't quite believe we'd actually done it, moved, on every single summit we reached.

Time to take stock: what began as an impossible journey turned, through patience and determination, into a wonderful journey into ourselves. At the start, we wondered whether we'd even make it, and the perceived effort felt enormous, but as the days and kilometers went by, while holding roughly the same pace throughout, we came to understand that, with enough determination, we'd get there, and our morale kept improving along with it.

P.S.: apparently, I don't look quite as wrecked as I feel, because the volunteer at the finish-line aid station refuses to hand me a beer until I show him my bib. As always in races like this, the reward is simply the satisfaction of having made it, and only those who've made it themselves truly know just how much, and what kind of, hardship it took to get there. In fact, we can't even find anything to eat, since everything in Ordino shuts down at 10 pm!