Three mountains in Bizkaia. Fun trail run, steep hikes and a bit of scrambling. Remembering my first hikes & camps.
If you are OK with a long day out, one of the main and easy spots for hiking “around” Bilbao, my hometown, is Gorbea. Buses going back and forth from the city to different areas below the mountain. Map with a few options.
See full screen & Garmin going to Supelegor cave through Itxina
One day I decided to trail run the area. I started in Murgia, on the South. Just to revisit the places where we used to go camping when we were teenagers around Sarria. Really good memories of those camps, river, little pools and waterfalls.
The ascent from this side is quite steady although not the most beautiful. Grassland with cows and horses grazing.
Almost no trees in this side. Up to the cross on the very top of the mountain. Completely inside the fog this time, therefore with no views…
A few photosphere for reference.
And going down.
This time, I decided to leave the green easy path behind and continue North direction. Brown line. The descent is a bit more technical, rocky, but way more beautiful too.
Light forest.
And more grassland with sheep and horses (local breed: big bellied, short legged and with funny fringes).
The main path goes downwards but I instead turned westwards to Itxina. Kinda blue line (I don’t have the GPS recording of those days 🤷♂️ pre Garmin).
A really nice and dense forest area that I child remember from those camping and hiking days when we were fifteen years old. Through rocks.
Moving to a bit muddy path, where you need to carefully follow the paint marks on the rocks. Or just get a bit lost and every now and then check the GPS to find the faint paths again.
Still foggy and with special rock formations. A “door” which the path crosses.
Atxular. In a clear day.
And back
to the main path and down to the village of Ceanuri or Areatza where to take bus back home. A long day, 32km and almost 2k of total elevation gain.
If you have a car you can drive up to Pagomakurre (Larreder parking) and avoid all the boring parts. From there, another day, we hiked to the Cave of Supelegor. The Blue loop. Interesting
with big upper hole inside.
and the mossy forest area that I like so much.
With Niko, one of my best friends since university time, we hiked Anboto. Not far from Gorbea. Approximated map.
Drive till the starting point and the peak waiting for us up there.
There are different routes but we decided to ascend the steepest, just following the path marked in my phone GPS.
Walking poles and up we went.
The views behind.
And down again, this time through the Southern mountainside.
We both thought that this way, which supposedly was easier, was more technical in some areas instead. Only difference is that there are some flat areas too.
Anboto is the place where according to Basque folklore Mari, goddess/witch, used to live. Her home was a cave there, which might be this one (?) with views to the lands below.
It was getting late, we rushed down…
But we arrived after sunset, which is pretty late in summer, a bit dark. There are a lot of magnificent hikes around. In my previous visit Niko also took me to a nearby mountain: Alluitz.
See full screen and the wikiloc I used as base with pics for your easier reference.
Just start under Atxarte mountain, up through light forest.
Soon tree line passed.
Up we went.
The views (in this case the way behind) are really impressive.
You walk here through the “Devil’s way” or “Hell Crossing”, in Spanish el Paso del Infierno.
Walking on the “crest” of the mountains up and down. For sure not for those with any vertigo, but safe hiking carefully. Video.
Up again with paint marks on the rocks to guide you.
We could see how the fog was building up down there.
And although our initial plan was to continue hiking and connect all this Alluitz area with Anboto (up there behind in the pic),
we decided to be cautious and went down back to the car in the fog surrounded by horses.
Nice route in any case.
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