Now the fun began as the going increased steeply, following a trail of like-minded folk across the glacial moraine, up onto snow again, and, ever so slowly, crampons biting into the snow, up to the Brèche, 40 metres wide and 100 metres high.
Already climbers were up there tackling overhanging and friable rock, and dropping loose bits onto their friends below. We stopped for another break, and I waggled a cheese butty at them in salute.
On the Spanish side, the great wall of rock leaned outwards by a good fifteen degrees, sure at some stage to collapse under the force of gravity, but for now content just to ping sun-loosened rocks onto unsuspecting alpinists below.
Once clear of this tricky passage we clambered up a high rock step to pass a great solitary pillar of rock, Le Doigt.
Beyond it an easy path pushed onwards for another kilometre to a rather uninspiring summit...well, uninspiring in terms of its baldness. Nothing though, is uninspiring about the vast panorama of daunting peaks, culminating in Pico d'Aneto, the highest of the Pyrenean mountains and in Aragon, Spain's third-highest mountain.
Reaching a height of 3,404 metres, it lies in the Spanish province of Huesca, the northernmost of all three Aragonese provinces. But that was for another day.