Pic du Midi d'Ossau
Interesting facts
- In exceptionally clear weather the peak can be seen from the Dune du Pilat on the Atlantic coast, nearly 200 kilometres away.
- Midi means south: from the plains of Béarn the peak marks due south, and until the 19th century it was often called the Pic du Midi de Pau.
- A 2016 three-dimensional survey put the summit at 2,883.84 metres, just under the rounded figure of 2,884 metres.
- The ancient caldera measured an estimated 6 to 7 kilometres across; the peak is a thickened part of its ring of intrusive rock, later tilted and raised.
- The earliest known attempt on the summit was made by the nobleman François de Foix-Candale, probably in 1552, though whether he reached the top is disputed.
- Count Armand d'Angosse made the third known ascent on 2 August 1802, accompanied by his servant, a shepherd and three youths aged 14 to 16.
- The Pointe Jean-Santé, the last of the four summits to be climbed, was first reached on 26 August 1927 by Jean Santé, who gave it his name.
- The mountain now carries around fifty climbing routes, graded from beginner level to hard competition standard.
- According to legend, the split peak is the petrified head of the mythical hero Jean de l'Ours, a tale found in a 14th-century Arabic travel account.
- The British Romantic painter Clarkson Stanfield made the mountain the subject of a landscape painting in 1854.
Why it is worth it
Few mountains are as instantly recognisable as the Pic du Midi d'Ossau. At 2,884 metres it is far from the highest summit in the Pyrenees, but it stands alone at the head of the Ossau valley, a dark, split tooth of rock visible from the streets of Pau some 50 kilometres away, and it has become the emblem of the French side of the range. From the north it shows two horns, the Grand Pic and the Petit Pic (2,812 m); walk round to the south and two more points appear, the Pointe d'Aragon and the Pointe Jean-Santé. The people of Béarn call it affectionately Jean-Pierre, Jan-Pè in the local language — by one explanation, the elder son and the younger.
Its shape is owed to fire. The mountain is the eroded heart of a volcano active in the Permian period, around 278 million years ago, whose caldera collapsed and was later lifted and buckled when the Pyrenees were raised. What remains is a ring of hard volcanic rock that the ice and weather have left standing while softer ground around it wore away — which is why the peak rises so abruptly from its pastures and why its walls are so sheer.
The first ascents belong to shepherds. According to French accounts, a herder from the Aspe valley reached the top in June 1790 to place signals for the surveyor Louis-Philippe-Reinhard Junker; the English tradition dates the first recorded climb to 1797. The ordinary route today is still a serious scramble, climbed from the Pombie refuge, and technical routes seam its faces. Most visitors, though, come to walk around it rather than up it: the circuit of the peak crosses high cols and passes little lakes, and the nearby Lacs d'Ayous are famous for holding the mountain's reflection in still morning water. The massif lies within the core of the Pyrenees National Park, created in 1967, and the GR 10 long-distance trail crosses it.
Getting there
The practical base is the upper Ossau valley: from Pau, follow the N134 and D934 south past Laruns and Gabas; just above Gabas a side road climbs to Lac de Bious-Artigues, the usual start for the tour of the peak and for the Ayous lakes. Lourdes is the nearest large town in a straight line, about 42 km away across the ridges, but Pau is the natural approach. The nearest airport is Pau Pyrénées Airport (PUF), about 60 km away. The summit route is graded PD and calls for mountaineering experience; the tour of the peak is a long day's hike of around six hours.
Plan your visit
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Nearby places
- Canfranc International Station 11.9 km · railway-station
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From the encyclopaedia
The Pic du Midi d'Ossau is a mountain rising above the Ossau Valley in the French Pyrenees. Despite possessing neither a glacier nor, in the context of the range, a particularly high summit, its distinctive shape makes it a symbol of the French side of the Pyrenees. This familiar shape also makes it easily recognisable from afar, and it is particularly distinctive from the Boulevard des Pyrénées in Pau, some 55 km to the north.
Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0
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