Hiking the Faja de Las Flores, Ordesa Valley

The Faja de las Flores is one of the most beautiful, classic routes in the Ordesa Valley (Valle de Ordesa), located in the Ordesa and Monte Perdido National Park. While I do love the evocative name, Monte Perdido—Lost Mountain, it’s also a fantastic place to see some color in the fall and I really enjoyed a fall day hike we did there last year. So we headed back there this October for an overnight trip.

Because of its beauty, the Ordesa Valley is extremely popular. As such, access to the park is limited in the summer and the long weekend we chose for our trip. During these times, access to the parking lot at the main trailheads is closed. Instead, visitors must park in a large lot in the nearby village of Torla, a striking place also worthy of a visit, and take a shuttle bus to the main parking lot within the park.

We got there early, but not very early. Even though it was a little after sunrise, there was already a long line for the shuttles. Based on the number of camper vans we saw in the parking lot, I assume that many people stayed in the lot overnight or along the road in one of the pull-outs, giving them the early-bird advantage. But it didn’t matter in the end because we easily made it on to the third or fourth bus of the day, clustered with many who were most likely planning on doing the most popular hike in the area that goes to the Cola de Caballo (horse tail) waterfall.

When we got off the bus, I headed to the little café across the parking lot and got a couple of mini-trenzas (a type of braided pastry) to snack on before we started for the day. At first, the trail followed along the road we just came in on the bus, but then it started gradually climbing up through the forest. We kept leap frogging with a group of four hikers who were super friendly and seemed to be having a good time checking out all the interesting mushrooms along the trail, just like us. The trail started to get a bit steeper, and we stopped for a snack at a small emergency lean-to.

After the lean-to, we reached the top of the tree line and could see the trail we would be taking along the cliffside—the Faja de las Flores. This trail follows a faja, or layer, in the rocky cliffside that has eroded faster than the layers above and below, making a natural path to traverse the side of the cliff for about 5 km/3 miles. Even though the trail itself follows the cliff, much of it is quite wide and easy to walk on. During the spring, the trail is full of flowers (flores), hence the name.

However, although the faja itself is quite mild, you first have to get there, which involves some rock scrambling and climbing up the clavijas. These are just metal bars drilled into the rocks to make the rock scrambling portions easier and less technical, at least skill-wise. While seemingly a fantastic aid to help people access the beautiful trails above, the clavijas have a sad history. They were originally installed at the request of hunters who wanted easier access to the mountains and cliffsides in the area so they could hunt bucardo. A bucardo is a type of mountain goat that is now extinct. Hmm, I wonder why.

There are two different approaches to the Faja de las Flores and both have sections of clavijas, with one that is more exposed than the other. As such, it is possible to do the faja in a loop going up one set and down the other. We chose to go up the less exposed set, las Clavijas de Salarons (Carriata), which also has two options. One is a rock scramble followed by clavijas and more clavijas. The other traverses a narrow faja (la fajeta) and up a long, exposed rock scramble. We chose the first option, as my partner had once come down the latter and felt that it was more exposed.

I was a bit worried about this section. However, when I first saw it, it didn’t seem too bad, especially since the rock was angled and not vertical. But about mid-way, I got into sort of an awkward position trying to climb up a large sloping rock without a lot of natural foot holds. I had more difficulty getting over it than I would have liked and chastised myself for my initial overconfidence. Appropriately humbled, I walked away from that set of clavijas, heading uphill thankful that I was done. Or not. As we soon reached another, much more vertical set in a narrow crevice. I was concerned that I would get stuck with the big backpack. Though these were much easier than the previous ones despite their verticality.

After the clavijas, we took a short break, greeting the other mushroom aficionados for the final time as they passed us. Their trail would soon diverge. The rest of the way to the faja was not well marked and a little confusing, but because you can easily see it, and the people walking on it, just above, it was more or less easy to orient ourselves in the right direction.

Once in the faja, I was impressed. It is a really dramatic and gorgeous place. We probably spent most of our time just taking photos in this earlier part. Overall, the Faja de las Flores is actually quite long because you traverse around and around and around the twists and turns of the cliffs, following the valleys below. Toward the end, I must admit that I was starting to get a bit tired of it. Around every corner, I kept thinking, “This is it. This the end.” But more often than not, it wasn’t at all.

As with all things though, we did finally reach the end. Here, we proceeded onto one of the most interesting landscapes I have seen. The entire surface of the high, flat area we were traversing was limestone. Yet, it wasn’t flat. Eons of water had carved the limestone into a network of deep grooves and pits, and most likely caves. To me, it looked like a glacier at the end of the summer when it’s covered with long, deep crevasses. And, like a heavily crevassed glacier, it was difficult to navigate.

It is in this area where you can find the way down the more exposed clavijas (las Clavijas de Cotatuero), which looks more like a via ferrata. However, we skipped those this time around and headed beyond the grassy open space, up into the mountains where we could camp for the night. The next day, after some fearful (on my part) monkeying around in my most hated substrate (scree), we returned on a well-established trail to the Goriz refuge, down past the Cola de Caballo waterfall, and back to Torla via the shuttle.

Overall hike stats

Distance: ~10 miles/16 km (total to our campsite)

Elevation gain: ~4,500 ft/1370 m

Time: 9 hours with stops