A big traffic jam!

After all the snow and bad weather, we decided that Saturday was the day and so we loaded the car and started out to Le Somport, just over the border in France. It's about 30 minutes' drive from Jaca on an excellent road. HOWEVER, not long into our journey we realised it would take us longer; there was a continuous line of cars going very slowly, stopping and starting from the second village on the route. We thought it was just sheer volume of traffic; there having been several weekends when the ski resorts couldn't open due to bad weather. When we finally got to the turning for the first ski resort of Candanchu we saw the problem. The main road was closed and all the cars had to drive through Candanchu.

The main road was blocked by a bank of snow, I imagine that further on it was either blocked by an avalanche or in danger of that happening.

So all the traffic wound through the road which goes into Candanchu and out the other side, where most cars went towards Astún and what looked like just a few crossed the border to Somport, the cross-country ski resort. Le Somport is on the road which goes down into France, but it was blocked with another bank of snow, so the only access was from Spain. 

So we finally arrived, parked and got skiing. There is a layer of at least two metres of snow over everything up there; enough for everyone. 

This sign is usually taller than me.

Some of the smaller trees were almost buried.

The snow was quite hard as it wasn't fresh and had melted and frozen again.

It was really beautiful, and not very difficult to get away from the many, many other people there.

When we left, we saw there were cars parked along the road, both sides, right up to and beyond the border with Spain; more than I've ever seen before there.