Although this was one day of flying, I decided to break up the outbound and returning leg of the flight into two blog posts, as I ended up taking almost 5000 photographs, and there is just too much to show. That is a record for one flight. While I don’t per se keep track, I definitely smashed the crap out of any prior flying day by a wide margin with the image count.
The way out is straight west, flying the length of the Pre-Pyrenees. The next post will be the same leg coming back, except over the spine of the Pyrenees – nearly the entire length of the mountain chain.
The Pre-Pyrenees are interesting in that they are not exactly foothills, as the terrain can exceed timberline, yet the rock features are immensely varied, with all sorts of interesting things going on. The Pyrenees themselves are as one would expect: big ass mountains.
The terrain contained things that reminded me of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Appalachia, New York, farm country, hill country, scrub brush, snow, thick pines, and everything in between. I was like a kid in a candy store and my arm literally got tired holding the camera and my hand fatigued from pressing the shutter button. With 548GB of camera cards and 11TB of hard drive space, I am awaiting the arrival of my new computer, as the current one is ready to start on fire when I start retouching photos. Too many pictures….
Map of flight out and back. Outbound leg (this blog post) is bottom half of the white line. Yellow line is border of Spain and France (France north, Spain south for the geographically ignorant).
Inversion – though it will not be affecting this flight!
Serra de Boumort
Collegats-Queralt
Embassament de Sant Antoni
Vall Alta de Serradell-Terreta-Serra de Sant Gervàs
Muntanya d’Adons
Vertical rock is a very nice thing to see in an airplane.
More or less the border of Aragón and Catalunya. Més o menys la frontera de Catalunya i Aragón. Hey, imagine that….Catalan! Más o menos la frontera de Cataluña y Aragón. Spanish too!
Unnamed terrain. Closest village is El Sas.
Apparently terrain like this is so common, it has no name. Closest village complexes all end in Serradúy….
Highway HU-V-9601.
Turbón
Collado de el Santo.
Peña Montañesa
More vertical rock!
It is getting exhausting figuring out the names for these things (that, and in an Aragonese symbol of not giving a crap, the hills stop having a name on Google Maps). These are between the last named mountain and Jaca.
There are three churches at timberline on this hill, all duly named after some long dead saintly figures, yet nobody can bother to name the mountain itself?
East of Sabiñanigo, looking east toward where I came.
West of Sabiñanigo, looking toward Santa Cilia airport.
There is a terrain feature like this in southwest Virginia, deep in hillbilly Appalachian coal country. I really don’t know what to say as the comparison is unmistakable yet I have no desire to defile Spain with the Confederacy….
What the hell is this?
Jaca
West of Jaca, just before the airport.
I heard some strange noises coming from behind the fueling station at the airport. I walked back to find out that chickens live there. If one wishes to understand why Mexico and all of Latin America is the way it is, may I suggest non-Catalonian Spain as an explanation?
