Hiking the Snow Well route from Ibi to Alcoy

I believe I mentioned last Fall that the Diputaci�n (Provincial Government in Alicante aka representation of the National Gvmt) organises hikes on Sundays... They fill up a bus, and since it's subsidised it's quite a bit cheaper than other groups that take you out by bus... which means there's a very high demand to get a spot! In fact, if you don't send in your e-mail requesting a spot for a Sunday hike at precisely 9 a.m. the previous Monday... then forget about it! I tried 3-4 times between last Spring and Fall and only got in once! So when I saw that they were starting up again this past weekend, I set an alarm on my cellphone to go off last Monday at 8h55 to remind me to go into my e-mail draft folder and get ready to send the e-mail (already prepared with the necessary attachments) as soon as the clock struck 9! And 10' later I had an answer confirming I had scored a spot for myself and a friend, YAY! :o)

The group in charge of the Spring hikes is quite a bit more hard core than the one in the Fall. Those were all "easy" to "moderate". The hikes programmed for this next month are all "difficult"! Sadly because of budget cuts (damn never-ending crisis!) only 5 outings have been authorised (i.e. financed), which is a pity because the guides were telling us they had put together a fascinating programme which would have involved crossing the whole Province of Alicante, from north to south, in 20 days of 5-6h hikes! Now there's something I would love to do! But it wasn't meant to be... another year perhaps?

So they just kept 5 hikes from their original list, and last Sunday (Mar 25) was a 16.4 km (10.2mi) hike from the town of Ibi to the town of Alcoy, crossing the mountain that separates the two (which meant a climb of about 554m - 1818ft - followed by a descent of 740m - 2428ft -). We pretty much followed the PR-26 from Ibi to the summit of the Menejador, in the Natural Park of the Font Roja, and then followed the PR-160 down towards Alcoy until we reached the river Polop, which we followed until the V�a Verde de Alcoy and walked along that until we got into town. I wasn't able to find a map online with this exact route charted, so I adapted one (all hail powerpoint!). The purple arrows show the way! ;o)

I'm not a morning person, so getting up (indecently) early to go on all these Sunday hikes hasn't been easy... and it was a lot harder last Sunday because we lost an hour the night before! Oh well, at least when we started out from Ibi at 9h30 we had gorgeous blue skies and warm sunshine. :o)

keep reading!