Trekking Diaries – Sierra Nevada (Mountaineering)

Day 17th

We reached Granada in 17 of August and after a stop in the commercial zone to a supermarket to search for condensed milk in a tube (Antonio’s ideas), we head off to the center of the city hopping to find some information about any trekking routes and topographic maps of the mountain. Quickly we both discovered that in Granada we wouldn’t find anything so we set off for the mountain following the indications to Sierra Nevada that would lead us to Pradollanos. After ascending by car around 1000 m we found a information center, there we could find a topographic map with suggested trekking routes graded by technical difficulty, time spend, physical difficulty. We had been successful with our goal but since we were there, we decided to proceed ascending to Pradollanos at 2075 m of altitude and afterwards to the highest point you are allowed to go by car 2500m of altitude. There were some coffee shops/restaurants where we took an ice cream moment. After carefully considering we decided to do a 2 days route Trevelez – Poqueira – Mullacén – Trevelez. Afterwards we set off for Trevelez its took us about almost 2h to get there, taking a mountain road from the exit of A44 to Lanjarón until Trevelez.

Trevelez is a small village located in the base of the mountain, the highest altitude village in Spain located around 1550m. The village is very beautiful when seen from far, all the houses are painted white, I can only imagine due to the same reason that in Portugal houses in the south are painted white (in the summer its hot, hot and hot…)and its shape ascends in the mountain. We stayed for the night in a camping park close to the village.

http://www.campingtrevelez.net/

Comments: There are several route possibilities according to the time you want to spend in the mountain, maybe the most famous one is the Integral 3000m that is a route that takes you from one side of the mountain to the other side crossing all the peaks with altitude superior to 3000m of altitude, a very interesting route in my opinion I would have liked to do it, but unfortunately this route takes a minimum of 4 to 5 days trip and we only had two. The most emblematic peaks Veleta, Alcazaba and Mullacén as well as the lagoons at the base of Mullacén (siete lagunas) are must go places, other than that it’s a little up to your own preferences. Veleta can be easily reached starting from Pradollanos, there is even a mini-bus service that takes almost to the peak. For Mullacén there are several possibilities coming from Veleta, Siete Lagunas among others, the technical difficulty of the trails is not very high, therefore any person with a minimum experience on mountain can do it. For Alcazaba I would say the best option is take the trail of the Siete Lagunas and from there proceed to Alcazaba. Although we first decide to spend the night in Poqueira following the locals advice we end up doing the siete Laguna trail and staying over on close to the biggest lagoon.

http://www.nevasport.com/sierranevada/montana/05integral.php (in spanish)