Balaitous: two centuries since the first ascent.

This 6 August 2025 marks no less than two hundred years since the first ascent of the Balaitous, the first great Pyrenean summit to exceed three thousand metres on the western side. Its protagonists were two geodesists, officers of the French army, Pierre-Eugène-Félicien Peytier y Paul Michel HossardThe Spanish border surveyors were responsible for carrying out topographical work on the border with Spain.

Unlike other first ascents of the great Pyrenean peaks, Peytier and Hossard's ascent of the Balaitous had no sporting purpose, no desire for glory and no recognition. Thus, the notes of their adventures on the Pyrenean "Pyrenean mountain" remained hidden for more than 70 years, until 1898, when the historian and bibliophile Henri Beraldi located the original documents and revealed the true dimension of that journey. The account, contained in the campaign notebooks and reports of the Service Géographique de l'Armée, was written in a strictly technical tone, without drama or epic.

First attempt: to Palas by mistake.

The first attempt to reach the summit took place on 16 July 1825, from Lake Artouste. The result was the first documented ascent of the "Castillo de los Moros" or "Cuje la Palas", i.e. the present-day Palas (2,974 m). The ascent probably took place via the ridge that falls to the north and which today is coincidentally called the "Arista de los geodesicos" (Geodesic Ridge).

Second attempt.

Aware of their mistake, our two officers would return the next day, this time to the real Balaitous. They managed to reach the start of a ridge that they considered too dangerous. It was most probably the Packe Russel (PD+) ridge, the second route opened on the Balaitous in 1865 by Charles Packe and Gaspard d'Arrens, the fourth absolute ascent of the mountain. The curious thing is that they believed they were ascending a virgin peak, however, on reaching the summit, they found the remains of the large stone turret that their predecessors had erected 40 years earlier and the remains of the abandoned material.

Third time's the charm.

Returning to our protagonists, having discarded the west ridge, Peytier and Hossard set off for the Azún valley to make a new attempt. Now, on the 6th of August 1825, they managed to reach their objective. In their notes of that day, there is a brief account of the route followed, which passed by the Lac de Suyen, the Doumblas huts, the Tour de Larribet hut and the Plan de Larribet. From where they point out that it is still five hours from the hut to reach the summit and there are very bad passes". No further details.

Back to the Balaitous.

The story did not end there. The following year, on 25 August 1826, Peytier and Hossard returned to the Balaitous with eleven men recruited from the valley. Their mission was to carry the heavy topographical instruments to the summit. This time, they stayed on the summit for 8 days, until food became scarce. It was during this expedition that they erected the great stone turret, exactly 3 metres and 42 centimetres high, which would prove to be the key to reconstructing history decades later.

The descent was dramatic and part of the topographical instruments had to be abandoned on the summit, so that on 10 September, Peytier and one of his assistants returned for a third time, with the Balaitous snowed in, to collect all the material. A third ascent that was to prove epic.

But where did they come up?

For a long time, the exact route followed by the geodesists was a mystery and it was even questioned whether they had actually reached the summit. The Balaitous is not a simple mountain, then or now. Everything changed when, forty years later, Charles Packe located the remains of the turret and some of the abandoned material on the summit. But it was still not known which route had been used.

The mystery seemed impossible to solve but, in 1890, new evidence appeared, the testimony of two men in the arsenal of Tarbes, whose fathers would have taken part in the second ascent, and who pointed to the Néous glacier as the most probable route.

The mystery remained until 1898, when Henri Beraldi came across the original reports. This was the starting point for a more exhaustive investigation which led three famous figures of Pyreneanism, Henri Brulle, René d'Astorg and Celestin Passet, to set out in 1901 to explore every corner of the northern slope of the Balaitous in search of the route followed by their predecessors 76 years earlier.

The Néous glacier route was discarded. From the place they had climbed, it was neither logical nor usual for the time to cross the glacier, and even less so in August. So they went along the entire north flank in search of a gap that appeared in the reviews. After an ascent over very confusing terrain, a few hours later they reached a sort of col between the "little Balaitous" (a forcipient known today as Cap Peytier-Hossard) and the Balaitous. However, the route they followed seemed too difficult and was also discarded. They made the summit and it was on their way back to this pass that the solution, the key pass of the ascent, presented itself: the vira Beraldi, named after Henri Beraldi. The route almost certainly used by his predecessors followed the ridge that breaks off to the north of the then "Little Balaitous", crossing it up to three times. This is consistent with the most relevant data in the report, the gap and the 20 minutes to the summit after the difficulties. The mystery had been solved.