Hiking the Picos de Europa...Day 5 Hitu to Caseton de Andara and back to Sotres

Once again, a new day dawned with clear skies. This view from our Hotel Sotres' window promised another glorious hiking day. 

Today, our 8.5 mile hike with its 1,800 ft ascent and 2,730 ft descent will take us from Hitu to Caseton de Andara and back to Sotres. 

The terrain was quite varied today with everything from steep rocky trails 






to numerous cols and then rolling cow paths.




We started our hike with an ascent via an unused mining track which wound around 

the mountain and led us to some stunning views of the Cantabrian Sea and the Bay of Biscay! 





You can see our trail cut in the mountain in the distance.

As we continued up we had a great view.

We continued our ascent

along a former mining track which took us to an abandoned ore mine









and to refugio Caseton de Andara


which was wedged into the rock wall.
From there we ascended up a steep path

to a col 

where we saw vultures and eagles soaring on the thermals overhead.

It was a lovely view from our lunch spot.








Time to head on down

to the long way back to Sotres.
Our descent was primarily across several cols.

We stopped for a while on this lovely vista. I looked down at the stone to see that large letters were written on it spelling "SOTRES" with an arrow pointing the way! 

We headed down thru lovely fields of heather

thru farmers' high alpine cow pastures

to the valley below

until finally to the road to Sotres.