If you have travelled to the beautiful town of Benasque, you are most likely looking for fresh air, a beautiful Pyrenean landscape, peace and harmony with nature and, for sure, all the things that you cannot buy in any shop of any city. But it may also be that you have come to climb the Aneto, the highest peak of the Pyrenees.
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If you have travelled to the beautiful town of Benasque, you are most likely looking for fresh air, a beautiful Pyrenean landscape, peace and harmony with nature and, for sure, all the things that you cannot buy in any shop of any city. But it may also be that you have come to climb the Aneto, the highest peak of the Pyrenees.
If that is the case, we won’t explain to you what you probably already know: mountains deserve a lot of respect, and more than three thousand meters it’s a lot of meters.
But to take some of the heat out of the issue, today we are going to tell you the legend of Massif of the Maladeta, to which the famous Aneto Mountain belongs to.
Long… long time ago, in the place that the Massif occupies today, there were green and friendly slopes, to which a group of shepherds took their flocks. Everything was very pretty and beautiful until one day a storm broke out and the shepherds went to take shelter in a cabin.
A short while later, a ragged and freezing pilgrim knocked on the door and asked to be let in for the night. But the shepherds refused, with such bad luck, that it turned out that the homeless man was God himself in disguise. Annoyed once again with the human race that he had created, he launched a terrible curse that transformed the grasslands into glaciers, flocks into rocks and each one of the shepherds on an icy mountain.
The curse and the eternal ice accompanied the Massif for centuries, and it would be hard to change the matter. Up until the eight century nobody had a great interest in climbing mountains, and when they did it was more for cartographic and military purposes.
It took longer to discover that the Aneto, which we know now to be 3,404 meters, was the roof of the Pyrenees. But yes, as soon as it was discovered plenty of adventurers and explorers came with a desire to conquer it. The problem was the vast glacier that surrounded the peak added to the cursed aura that the zone still conserved in the nineteenth century, when those pioneers and brave climbers faced the challenge.
The first attempt was made in 1820 and ended just as bad as all of the following years. The Mountain kept taking the lives of the mountaineers, and the curse grew and grew, until in 1842, a new expedition managed to reach the summit and to dissipate part of the demons.
Those were other times, we know, but the mountain is still a dangerous thing that also gives excellent rewards. Like the fantastic views from its top of the Central Pyrenees especially if you are lucky with the clouds and the fog.
