Hiking the Haute Randonnée Pyrénéenne (HRP)
Background #
The Haute Randonnée Pyrénéenne (Pyrenees High Route, HRP) is a through-hike of the Pyrenees, a mountain range that forms the border between Spain and France. There is no single HRP "trail". The spirit of the hike is to traverse from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean across the mountains while staying as high as conditions permit.
The HRP is well documented elsewhere. In this post we describe how we prepared for it and how our hike turned out. We hope you will find this a useful reference if you're considering the HRP yourself. The guidebooks we used are listed under Planning; refer to them for detailed information.
Vibes #
The HRP was fun, and we'd recommend it to anyone looking for a longer hike in Europe. The route-setting is superb. You pass many of the hallmarks of the Pyrenees (Aneto, Cirque de Gavarnie, Puigmal ridge walk), and avoid roads and crowds as much as possible. You meet lots of wildlife (marmots, vultures, ibex, isards, salamanders). 10/10 route.
Time & difficulty #
We hiked the HRP in August 2026. We took 30 days, including rest days. We walked 10-12 hours a day at a comfortable pace. Technically, the hike was not particularly difficult, but there are quite a few scrambly sections where you have to pay attention. Many of the bits described as difficult or improvised in the guidebooks have become popular day hikes (e.g. the western ascent of Canigou), so most of the route is now on good paths. The most challenging aspect for us was the heat.
Weather and wildfire risk #
The weather was nice most of the time, as expected in France/Spain in the summer, but we encountered many hailstorms and had multiple days where we drank over 8 litres of water per person to cope with the heat. However, we were hiking during a historic heat wave.
Wildfire is a significant risk that we did not see mentioned online or in guidebooks. We had three days of very poor visibility due to smoke. On the penultimate day of our trip, the temperature was 33°C and there were high winds, so the government closed the Albères massif that we had to cross to get to Banyuls (the terminus). You can (as of 2026) monitor the closure status at https://www.risque-prevention-incendie.fr/. The website updates daily.
Surviving the sun #
To shield ourselves from the sun, we carried plenty of sunscreen, wore full-coverage sun hats, and used backpacks with back ventilation. We brought plenty of electrolytes and salty foods to replenish the minerals that we lost due to perspiration. Hyponatremia is a real risk during long-distance hikes in the heat. If you would like to learn how to avoid it, watch this video from GearSkeptic.
Camping #
We camped on 27 out of the 29 nights. In general, bivouacking is allowed in the Pyrenees. What bivouacking means changes throughout the route. In some sections, you can only camp from 7 p.m. to 9 a.m., in others only above 2000 m. Those rules are usually signposted when you enter a restricted area. We did not encounter mosquitoes, and the weather was usually great in the morning and evening, making packing up and setting up the tent a breeze. There are some spectacular campsites on the HRP.
Many hikers on the HRP walk from refuge to refuge. There are many shelters along the route, both manned and unmanned. We enjoyed stopping at them for lunch, and we did a full rest day at the Refugi de Juclar in Andorra. The vibes in the huts seemed to be great, but we prefer camping.
Planning #
We used three guidebooks:
- Cicerone's Trekking the Pyrenean Haute Route: the standard English-language reference for the trail, a must-have. Splits the route into 45 days, which we found quite conservative. Assumes that you want to stay in a shelter on most nights. We consulted it every evening while planning the following day's route. But for choosing where to camp, where to get water, and which variant of the HRP to follow, we used...
- Whiteburn's Wanderings HRP Pocket Guide: very succinct, lists water and bivouac points along the route, allowing you to choose your own adventure. Many more variants than the Cicerone guide. Provides GPX files for all the variants, which we used for navigation
- Walking the HRP 2026: in theory, serves as a yearly update to the Cicerone guide. However, we found that the updates were often not in sync with the guide. Extensive comments on the quality of refuges along the route. Worth a read if you plan to do a refuge-to-refuge hike
Navigation #
We used GPS on our phones for navigation. The GPX tracks from Whiteburn's Wanderings proved very accurate. We tried to pick variants that avoided roads and stayed high wherever possible. Most of the route follows established paths, so there are usually blazes to follow. We used the GPS mostly to double-check when switching from one trail to another.
Food #
It's hard to find vegan food in the Pyrenees. The huts don't have vegan options (although we were told that they may cook vegetarian sometimes if you call ahead), and the shops are not well stocked. We chose not to rely on local infrastructure. Instead, we prepared food parcels, which we posted to campsites ahead of time. Of course, we contacted them to make sure they'd accept a delivery. We typically carried a week's worth of food, which is more than most HRP hikers, but we made sure to pack lightweight meals (our average calorie density was over 5 kcal/g), and our base weight is pretty low, so we didn't suffer too much. We recommend this video from GearSkeptic if you're interested in optimising your hiking food for weight and nutritional value.
Water #
If we had one complaint about the HRP, it would be the amount of livestock in the mountains, especially in the beginning, in the Basque country. In addition to being noisy, eroding the landscape, and making sure nothing taller than grass ever grows in mountain valleys, livestock pollutes water. The mountain rescue gets called to evacuate someone with diarrhoea every day. To stay healthy, we treated stream water both chemically, with chlorine, and mechanically, with a Sawyer Squeeze. We did not experience any gastrointestinal problems. In general, water availability is not an issue on the HRP. The guidebooks warn when there are longer sections without water. We had 3 litres of water carrying capacity per person and we rarely used more than half that between refills.
End remarks #
There really isn't much to say about the HRP that hasn't been said already. For us, it was the longest hike that we have ever done. Our previous adventures were more difficult technically, but shorter. We used the HRP to test whether we enjoyed longer through-hikes. Our conclusion - there is little difference between hiking for two weeks and hiking for a month. After a week, your body and mind adjust to walking 12 hours per day and it feels like you can keep going indefinitely. Given how difficult it is to take 30 days off, we will probably stick to shorter hikes for a while. The next step may be a 6-month through-hike, where you really put the rest of your life on pause to walk. We're still curious what it's like to hike the CDT/PCT/AT, but it will be a long time before we get the chance. For now, we leave you with some pictures of the Pyrenees. Thanks for reading!
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