'Val d’Aran is the valley of valleys,' says Alex Barceló, a half-smile flickering on his lips. He arrived from Barcelona at seventeen. What should have been a chapter became his story. Now, he guides mid- and high-mountain activities. As we set out, he notes, 'It’s strange how, in just a few minutes, you can go from noise to silence.' He’s right: one turn from the main road and the world contracts. The valley splinters into quiet streams: pace, scale, and expectation. All fade. At the threshold of Aigüestortes i Sant Maurici National Park, our winter trek begins.
The car stops. From here, the road becomes a white ribbon, twisting through forests and snow-buried meadows. We strap on our snowshoes as the February sun strikes with force. Walking beside Alex is Lara Baqués, his partner. She knows the place we are going to very well: her father was the first warden of Colomers, and she spent her childhood there.
We set off. Snow crunches underfoot. 'This is the best season in thirteen years,' Alex remarks. Signposts are buried under meters of white. Every contour is rounded, compact, and almost sculptural. The trail winds past isolated stone cabins and forest clearings until it opens onto a wide slope carved with snow channels. Skiers call it the Magic Mountain.
The scene could be an Alpine postcard. Yet for Lara, this place is a memory in motion. Her father was the first warden of the modern Colomers refuge in the 1980s. Her parents arrived at eighteen, when such roles barely existed in the Pyrenees. Like other young people of his generation, they occupied abandoned cabins, opened trails, and turned refuges into homes. They meant to stay only a season. They never left.
Lara grew up among these mountains. 'My memories are like flashes,' she says. 'Playing alone outside the refuge, climbing with my father, watching people arrive and wondering why I was there.' While other children had squares and festivals, she had trails and silence. For years, she didn’t realise how rare that childhood was. 'I understood when I left. That’s when I saw my life wasn’t like everyone else’s.' Her father studied the valley, naming places that had none. There is a peak bearing her name, and a room in the refuge as well.
But the mountain evolves, too. Park refuges are public; concessions rotate. When her father retired, management went to tender. The family applied but lost. 'There’s a small grief,' Lara admits. 'I still go in and see my room, my things… but it’s no longer my home.' She says it without bitterness, as someone who knows that in the mountains, everything may change. 'It’s life.'
Still, something at Colomers never changes. Her father used to say: It is the glacial cirque with the most lakes in the Pyrenees. 'Other refuges are more enclosed,' Lara explains. 'Here there’s space. The cirque opens. You have the lakes, the horizon. At Colomers, you breathe.'
The light softens at sunset. The refuge glows faintly. We open a few beers and watch the valley in silence. For Alex, who arrived as a teenager, this valley is home. For Lara, it is the living memory of what once was.
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