“Oh Nice, I went to Tuscany last year”. This is one of the typical answers you get in Turin,
my hometown, when you say that you are going for an expedition on the Pyrenees. It’s unfair
and wrong, I know. But that’s how it is. Torino is a city in the North West of Italy located
very close to the Alps. Exactly like Americans do not contemplate any other significant
country in the world, the Torinesi cannot relate mountaineering sports to anything else other
than the Alps. But now, let’s try to be objective and compare the Alps and the Pyrenees along
key dimensions:
SIZE
No comparison here. The Alps is the most extensive mountain range system in Europe,
stretching for 1,200 kilometres across eight countries: Austria, France, Germany, Italy,
Liechtenstein, Monaco, Slovenia, and Switzerland.
The Pyrenees instead extend for about 491 km, separating the Iberian Peninsula from the rest
of the continental Europe.
HISTORY
Pyrenees are a bit older, boasting about 10 million years. They were shaped by the collision
between the Iberian plate and the Eurasian plate about 130 million years ago.
The Alps were formed a bit later by the collision of the Eurasian and African plates.
GEOLOGY
The Eastern part of the Pyrenees consists largely of granite, particularly resistant to erosion
and glacial development, giving the chain a massive and unworn character. The Alps consist
of different layers of rock from the plates that collided, including limestone and gneiss. The
rocks are on average more prone to erosion, creating steep vertical peaks, as well as lakes and
glaciers.
LANDSCAPE
Due to different geology, landscapes tend to be quite different, across many points:
Structure: the Pyrenees run in a North–South sequence, while in the Alps, also due to
their size and diversity, there are all kind of patterns
Lakes: lateral valleys of the Alps are full of lakes, while in the Pyrenees water tends to
flow away in mountain torrents
Glaciers: in the Alps the glaciers are frequent and they stretch far down into the valleys,
while in the Pyrenees they are less frequent and have their greatest lengths along the
direction of the mountain chain.
It would not be fair and sensible for me to give a verdict, mainly for two reasons. First, I am
not sufficiently qualified since I have never been to the Pyrenees. Second, my admission to
the Lions has not been yet ratified and I’d rather maximize my chances. But I’m sure the
Pyrenees will live up to the highest Alpine expectations. Maybe next year I’ll ask some
Torinesi to come and see.
FOTO 1
Aletsch Glacier, Switzerland
FOTO 2
Glacier de l’Aneto, Spain