For those people that like walking in the nature, doing trails or climbing, there are two special mountains in Catalonia for this. They are magic for Catalans for different reasons. One of these mountains is Montserrat with its unique features and the astonishing monastery, and the other one is Pedraforca. A little bit further from Barcelona, you can reach Pedraforca base in less than 2h by car. When you approach to the mountain from the east in the morning you get these views.

Like a fork trying to eat from the sky, the mountain rises to 2506 m. We stablished our base camp in Saldes, a small village with just one street, one square and two bars. Then we started our trail towards the Lluis Estasen Refuge. The walk is steepy but it goes through a beautiful forest with views towards the south face of Cadí mountain range.

Before reaching the refuge we stopped for lunch while looking at the magnificent views of the east valley. Then we continued walking up to the mountain till we reached the refuge. It was full of people! Some event was in place and we didn’t know.

We asked in the café of the refuge and the man said that there was a mountain race in place. He told us that Kilian Jornet was running and he was in the first position. He should reach the refuge in few minutes! Kilian Jornet! The Messi of the mountains! The best ever mountain runner of all history was running in the same mountain as we were at that moment. We decided to have a beer on the grass while waiting for supporting Kilian.

And then we started hearing people yelling while those that were sitting just standed up quickly. Kilian was approaching. He arrived to the refuge, took some water and continued with its race towards the town of Gòsol in the west side of the mountain.

For those who don’t know Kilian, he just just did the record guiness of climbing Everest in less possible time without extra oxigen. But not only this, he climbed it twice in less than a week because the first time he had a stomach virus that made him to be slower. So this monster decided to climb it again after six days. He did it running in 16h 45m. A part from this he has been world champion many times in different mountain sports… as I said: he is just a Monster.

After that special encounter we walked towards the “tartera”, which is the rocky middle of the two peaks of the mountain fork. That is the place where people do its descending after climbing the “Pollegó superor”, the highest peak of Pedraforca.

Then we drove to Gòsol, where the mountain race ended. We had a nice dinner in a local restaurant. For the best views of Gòsol, don’t forget to go to its castle!

We were tired and we slept in our camping tent. The next day we had a plan: visit Castellar de n’Hug and the waterfalls of Llobregat where the river is born. But this will be explained in a future post.