The road is very nice, if you like strong sensations, pretty long from Barcelona – about 6 hours. Two very nice gorges that I’ve already seen this winter when I was skiing in Cerler.

From Benasque there is a bus that takes you to La Besurta which is the starting point for going to Renclusa refuge. A very nice and easy climb to Renclusa.

I stayed there for that night doing a small climb to a smaller lake above the refuge.

Eating some blueberries.

At Renclusa the stream is disappearing in a subterranean cave. The same as at Forao de Aigualluts.

Renclusa Refuge:

Another perspective from above Renclusa:

In the evening it started to rain and it did so all night. In the morning at 5 AM nobody was crazy enough to start the climb, as the weather was not looking good at all. At first I said that I will climb until the Portillon Inferior and I will see from there. As I climbed the weather had good and worse moments but allowed me to gain terrain.

At 9 AM the rain stopped and I started climbing by myself. The other guys from the refuge took other less complicated routes.

The road to Portillons. From time to time the weather seem to improve and I kept climbing.

Portillon Inferior:

Portillon Superior is where you pass on the other valley and start climbing for the glacier.

This is where I got lost. I had to do some zig zags to get the correct path. When the fog was to dense I stopped and eat some biscuits waiting for the weather to improve. Lucky me it didn’t take too long.

Before glacier was raining again.

I finally reach the glacier. In the winter or when the snow is present you reach more easy to this point. It was my first time on a glacier, so I took it easy to test my new ice ax and spikes. You need good boots with firm ankle grip as the tension is strong on them.

The weather was cold and wet and there were no marks from previous climber due to the rain.

Small crevases were all over the place, as blocks of granite floating over. The fog came back.

This was the moment I decided to finally turn back. It was pretty late, about 3.30 pm, as I left very late and I had to stop several times because of heavy fog. The peak was about 1 hour away and 100 m elevation, but I couldn’t afford losing 2 extra hours and go back on night on possible bad conditions. The peak stayed foggy all day and I almost didn’t have the chance to see it. The peak has also a difficult pass, Mohammed Brigde which is pretty difficult even in good conditions.

The way back was uneventful but hard. The knees are severely tested by all that 6 hours of rock to rock jumping.

View Aneto Climb in a larger map

This was a long and nice ride. I discovered a very nice massive, clean and beautiful. I really liked that is difficult and tested my capabilities. People who are looking for a walk in the park should find a park nearby because Aneto is not a park. These days climbing a mountain can seem more easy and danger less but the truth is that if you don’t pay attention the mountain will not forgive you. Respect the mountain and you’ll survive.

I have a discussion with a friend of mine about the real estate market in Spain. Her argument is that there is a gross surplus of unsold houses and this is the reason that the construction business is stopped. This article (es) states that 20 years of real estate boom on the coast had produces enough houses to satisfy generations of people, that it will take years to sell this houses. It is interesting that the author questions the logics behind this extraordinary growth, pushed by greed of local and foreign investors, residential tourism raising trend and demographic growth.

Nevertheless, the article is shortsighted and probably serves the same people who created and now mantain a crisis. As I no longer work as an architect I can look at this phenomena from afar. Here are my conclusions:

• People still need house. In fact, in the last four years, Spanish population growth rates have been unprecedented in the country’s history. According to INE (i.e. Spanish Statistical Office) data, from 1900 to 2000, maximum growth between two censuses was reached in 1960-1970, with mean year-on-year growth of 1%. However, since2000, that population growth figure has been exceeded every year and reached a peak of 2.1% in 2003. The second feature of this population increase is that it was unexpected. As can be seen from Graph 4, United Nations population projections for 2050 carried out barely ten years ago clearly underestimated the forecast Spanish population trend. Thus, in the mid-nineties, with a population of 43 million, it was estimated that this figure would hardly be 30 million by 2050. At present, the INE forecasts it to exceed 50 million inhabitants (pdf), 4 a disparity of 24 million (a 50% error) in the demographic projections for the middle of this century. Immigration in Spain has a growth rate of 2.1% a year. And they tell me that we don’t need houses!?
• what is wrong? Is wrong that politicians are RULED by money and architects are OVERULED by politicians and urbanologists are RULED by architects. Urbanism is a mixed science studying geographic, economic, political, social and cultural factors that should be taken into account when building a city. Of course nobody cared about this, and that is why instead of cities you have now cemeteries as the article author correctly states. This cemeteries can be populated through political action, but this government which responds only to big companies stimulus won’t do it. Not unless you have the next option…
• The next option is to WAIT. If something is broken, like the real estate now, the Spanish superthinking is the less proactive that you’ll ever see. LET’S WAIT. Maybe the things will go back and fix by themselves. This way we won’t be forced to loose money or to move a finger on social environment. Who will suffer? First the society, people will have to continue to live in favelas. Then let the constructors die and the architects, they are only accessories to the ‘making money from real estate’ business. But waiting is more important. Much more important. Remember the story that during the ’30 crisis in USA they throw the milk on the fields instead of selling to a lower price? Well this is happening now as well. Constructing cheap, which would be a normal response to all this expensive speculative prices, is the BIG adversary now for the people who have invested their money in house speculation. That’s why they want to block the construction permits, in order to keep the current prices until they will sell existing properties, or otherwise somebody could come and construct houses for 20.000 euro and sell them, and they would get stuck with 200.000 euros unsellable houses. So they have to create the impression of an overflow of houses. Tell that to my friends who share apartments.

My conclusion. You must still build as it is still very necessary. Build cheap and you’ll sell everything. And I don’t worry to much for the people who will loose money on existing construction build to be sold at extravagant prices. They had their winning time and they lived very well. For them I have the following advice: learn to loose, but never loose the lesson.

Sounds a little like something that Romanians did in the 50′s when, in my native town Brasov, then named Stalin City – in the honour of the “great” leader, when they plant trees on Tampa leaving only the Stalin name from firs.
The purpose I think is better this time.

For the moment this is the first and last tree that I bought although I really liked the idea and my intention was to buy more. I wanted to buy one for each member of my family, the first one being dedicated to my mother.

But what I see is a lack of attitude in the website organization. I don’t notice too much project activity. I see email with general environmentalist news, content generated on other places and a lot of partners. Instead of all this I wanna see a picture of my tree, small or big, ugly or not, at least too know that is alive and my money did go into a right place. I want to see how the things grow, live cameras, satellite images or other stuff to that will make me still believe in you.

This discussion continues in their forum.

###################

UPDATE

###################
Sometimes is worth bitching. Here is my tree :)
GPS: N 12º59´46.0´´ E 003º20´26.7´´

1 . *Because this is not a sport*. Maybe it is for it’s 20 super pilots. Backgammon is much more of a sport. And suicide has much more adepts but it’s not yet an Olympic Game. Acting in a robotic fashion is a thing we should discourage.

2. *Because encourages the pole position spirit*. I just want to save the souls of the scooter drivers that at every stop sign kill their engine to get first, and to spare some tires for the regular Logan (Dacia Logan) fanatics/fantastics.

3. *Because is unrealistically expensive*. For me they are just some adrenaline junkies who spend a lot of money satisfying engineering fetishes. With one team budget for a year you can buy enough soccer balls for all Africa junior high school teams. This mean millions of people who will practice a form of sport. ( _In March 2007 F1 Racing published its annual estimates of spending by Formula One teams. The total spending of all eleven teams in 2006 was estimated at $2.9 billion. This was broken down as follows; Toyota $418.5 million, Ferrari $406.5 m, McLaren $402 m, Honda $380.5 m, BMW Sauber $355 m, Renault $324 m, Red Bull $252 m, Williams $195.5 m, Midland F1/Spyker-MF1 $120 m, Toro Rosso $75 m, and Super Aguri $57 million._ link)

This should be enough.

Nice concept from the Forest Stewardship Council of Canada has launched the ecoHOME:

“to inspire residential design and lifestyle choices that promote healthy and sustainable living by:

* Raising the profile of sustainable and intelligent residential design;
* Engaging people in an interactive educational experience;
* Linking the built environment and the natural environment;
* Showcasing responsible and renewable building materials; and
* Demonstrating the integrated design process in action.”

It is designed and constructed by the Institute Without Boundaries, a program of the School of Design at George Brown College (of the World House project) with support from TreeHugger faves Levitt Goodman Architects.

“During construction and exhibition the ecoHOME will serve as an educational tool for students, professionals and the public. The materials and technology used in the construction and interior design of the ecoHOME will meet LEED® standards and demonstrate the environmental, social and economic principles of sustainability. Renewable and responsible wood products certified to meet the standards of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) will be used. The ecoHOME exhibit will also focus on how to live in a responsible manner after construction is complete, such as using certified paper products, non-toxic household cleaners, energy-reducing appliances etc.”

model seen at IIDEX/NEOCON

I love seeing projects like this and hate not seeing them build. Wasted human creativity.