Friday, 20 April 2018

One week later


https://videos.heraldo.es/aragon/el-monrepos-se-reabre-al-trafico-QkdpKy/
Just a week later, working 24 hours a day, they've reopened the mountain pass. It's a temporary solution but looks useable.
The alternative route is so long!

Sunday, 15 April 2018

Broken road, floods

On Friday morning we set off for Jaca. Arriving at the top of the Monrepos mountain pass at about 11.30, we were made to turn round and go back to Huesca. They closed the road to traffic and 15 minutes later part of that road fell off; yes, fell off!

Here are some photos from the Heraldo de Aragón




This one is before, going south
https://m.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=762520357469014&id=100011331690062&notif_id=1523878307609549&notif_t=story_reshare&ref=notif
As you can see, there is snow on the ground and it's very wet. There have been roadworks here for years, and we had hoped that part of the new motorway would be ready soon. However, it looks further off than ever. The mountain pass will be closed for at least ten days until they rig up an alternative lane.
In the meantime our route in and out of the Pyrenees is the pass of Santa Barbara. Rather narrow and wiggly, but al long as it isn't raining rather pretty. Only, in the last four days, Santa Barbara has been closed by rockfalls twice. There has been a lot of rain this week, and there will be a lot of melting snow. It seeps through the rocks and earth and causes these avalanches of rocks. We went back to Zaragoza that way this afternoon. It was clear, but you could see where the rocks had fallen and there was a waterfall over the road.  It's worrying, because it's not a good road and the traffic  will be far too heavy. It takes an extra half-hour to get from Jaca to Huesca, with no heavy vehicles.

The mountain roads have suffered, but down in the valley, there are worse floods than 2015