By Dan Rusu
de_rusu@yahoo.com
Three of the most famous mountain ranges in Europe: the Alps, the Carpathians and the Pyrenees – are extremely different from each other.
The longest range of them – the Carpathian Mountains – is low and almost everywhere up to the top was covered with forest. Its soft picturesque view does not change even in the gorges of the fast Carpathian rivers. Mountain streams can be called only conditionally: on them even fused timber rafts.
The highest mountain range – the Alps – in fact, not even the ridge, and the whole mountainous country of several parallel chains of mountain ranges, and worm-sawn numerous glaciers. The highest Alpine peaks rise above the surrounding mountains at 2,000 meters, but passes through the ridges, thanks to the tireless work of the glaciers, are low and easily accessible, with the possible exception that the area of Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn.
Pyrenees cane, no doubt, be called the most inaccessible of all the mountain ranges of Europe. Although their highest point – the peak of Aneto – is almost half a kilometer below the Mont Blanc, the average height of the Pyrenees is more than the Alps. Lined up in an orderly line up, the snow-capped Pyrenean giants are mostly about the same height, and to find a gap in their ranks is not easy. Therefore passes through the Pyrenees are on average twice higher than the alpine passes.
Until recently, no railway crossed the Pyrenees, bypassing their Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts. In the Central Pyrenees, there are places where for three hundred kilometers of the road no one passes through, lying at an altitude of about two and a half kilometers away, and to get from France to Spain, you can only follow shepherd trails.
Pyrenees represent an ideal mountain system: long straight chain mountains, from which, like the branches, extend side spines mostly directly opposite each other. Located between the transverse ridges of the valley deepened rabid mountain streams to such a degree that often resemble the American Grand Canyon. In the upper valleys are located glacial cirques - rocky amphitheater engaged once the glaciers. From the walls to the bottom of circuses thwarted waterfalls tape.
The biggest and most famous cirque is in the upper reaches of the river Gave de Pau in the north, in France, and is called Gavarni. It is much greater than the size of alpine cirques, but became famous in the first place, not for the size, but for its spectacular waterfalls.
Located at the foot of the circus Gavarnie, the second highest mountain in the Pyrenees - Monte Perdido, which reaches 3,356 meters and is only fifty meters inferior to the peak of Aneto. If the Matterhorn in the Alps is justly considered the most beautiful of granite peaks, the Monte Perdido can be called the most beautiful limestone top.
The limestone slopes of the southern slope of the Pyrenees, in recent years opened many karst caves, and it turned out that people lived in many of them are still in the Stone Age. Archaeologists have found here the rock carvings, clay figures and objects of everyday life of our ancestors.
In the Pyrenees is located, in particular, the second deepest cave of the world - a karst abyss Pierre-Saint-Martin, disappearing into the bowels of the mountains at 1,171 m, and the third largest cave system Trombe depth of 911 meters. (Deeper than them are only cave Rezo Jean-Bernard in Dolomites, reaching 1,602 meters.)
The Pierre Saint Martin is also the world's second biggest underground room: length 220, width 180 and a height of 150 meters! Large size underground cavities exists only in the Carlsbad Caverns in the USA.
As with other streams of karst areas, Pyrenean rivers often "disappear", diving in underground burrows, and then re-appear ten or twenty kilometers below. In the conditions of mountain terrain, this leads to the fact that in the interior there are sometimes fantastic complexity and picturesque karst masterpieces. For example, one of the rivers flowing through Sigaler cave, time to form a 52 underground waterfall to eighteen meters high!
It goes underground and the largest of the rivers beginning in the Pyrenees – the main river of southern France – Garonne. Its origins are in the south, the Spanish side of the ridge, near the peak of Aneto. It runs a few kilometers from its superior glacier, the river breaks waterfall off a cliff, and then dives into the karst abyss Trou de Tor. On the northern slope of the Pyrenees, Garonne is born again, appearing on the surface as a powerful source, named after the Eye of Jupiter. Collecting tons of water, the river is rapidly accumulating power high-water tributaries, and already from Toulouse it is a mighty waterway.
True lovers of the mountains, choosing to climb in the Western Europe, prefer to overcrowded Alpine slopes the hard way in the Central Pyrenees. And it's not seeking to have that travelers see sports climbing in these mountains. Deaf, devoid of roads and often trails, gorges, pristine nature, abundance of waterfalls, glacial cirques and caves provide the tourist a maximum of impressions.
The fauna of the Pyrenees is also better preserved than in the Alps. Here you can meet chamois and ibex, come across wild boars and bears, as well as very rare in European forests wolves.
