Pinsapo Pines and Pozos de Nieve

We wanted to walk some trails high up on the side of Torrecilla in the national park today, but walking up would have taken much of the day, so Francisco, the owner of our apartment, kindly offered to drive us up. We were able to start our hiking from a high elevation, see some of the more remote mountain sites, and walk back to town.

Before we came on this trip, I thought the national park was named Sierra de las Nieves because it snows a lot here. But this week, I read that this area got its name long ago from the thriving businesses that sprang up in the last century selling ice year round from the many snow wells located along mountain trails here. We saw the remains of one of those wells today. We estimate it was about 20 feet across, and would have been much deeper than what currently is showing. Snow was packed into the wells in layers during the winter and then sold as ice during the summer. The info panel next to the well showed a drawing with a ladder allowing access to the lowest layers, but the well we were at had protruding stones that were clearly meant to be used a steppingstones to get to the bottom.

Many hectares of pinsapo pines are protected in the park. These rare trees (found only here and in Morocco) survived the last Ice Age, but are endangered now by loss of habitat and viruses that thrive with climate change. We were surrounded by thousands of the trees today, including one curious specimen shaped like a candelabra. It grew like this due to unusual stresses, perhaps from snow or perhaps from animals colliding with it. We were also thrilled to see that we arrived in the area just at the time when the pink pollen cones are being formed (similar to the golden pollen cones we saw in Tolox last week).

It was very windy today, with gusts to 44 mph in town and even higher in the mountains as you will see at the end of the video. But we were grateful that it did not rain, and we had another day to enjoy the area surrounding the highest town in the province of Malaga.

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