With the valley clouds now burned away by the sun, the scenery invited all the superlatives we could think of, plus a few we invented – stupendifferous, fantasticracking, flabbermagic.
We stayed there for more than an hour, enjoying the pure mountain air until a rash of clouds started to form in the Spanish valleys to the south. We knew what warm moist air rising from France meeting hot, dry air rising from Spain can do, and we didn't want to be anywhere near it when it
all went bang. On another visit, we watched this spectacular fireworks display from the safety of our cottage balcony in Argelès; lightning spearing in every direction against a backdrop of dense, dark clouds.
Back below the Brêche de Roland we slid on our bottoms down the snow slope, finally braking with our ice axes before we became airbound.
A few months later, my father, then a sprightly 72-year-old, was too busy following a curvaceous young lady down this very slope, now devoid of snow, to pay much attention to where he was putting his feet. The result was a head-first dive from the scree ridge, destined to conclude in a much-unwanted and medically terminal shortcut to the Gavarnie valley. He was smiling, he really was; one of those ‘Well, I won’t have to put up with any more of your mother’s cooking’ smiles.
But he wasn’t getting off that easily. So, I jumped after him and grabbed him by the ankle just as he was about to enter oblivion. He lived for another sixteen years, in spite of mother’s cooking, but I don’t think he ever forgave me.