At first glance many might think
I might like
to have a go at doing that. Then you look down. For most people,
might
like quickly turns in to
would never, ever in a million years.
Welcome to Spain's Caminito del Rey, quite possibly the most dangerous pathway
in the world.
There are some places in this world to which even
the locals say you would be mad to venture. Sometimes this can be dismissed as
exaggeration or hyperbole designed to encourage the traveler to go and take a
look. In this case they are absolutely, one hundred percent correct. Travel
along the Caminito del Rey and you really would put your life in peril. Don’t
look down, now…
Look to the top left of this photograph and you can
see two hardy souls - their presence on the pathway gives you an idea of the
heights involved. The Guadalhorce River in Adalusia, Spain is home to El
Chorro. This is a limestone gorge which, in 1921, was damned to form three
reservoirs.
Image Credit Flickr
User Kozzmen
Image Credit Flickr
User KozzmenThe pass through is known as
Desfiladero de los
Gaitanes which climbs to seven hundred meters in height. To cross it – if
one is foolhardy enough, the Caminato del Rey – or in English the King’s Little
Pathway
may offer a route. Unless of course, you plummet to your death
as one unfortunate tourist did in 2000 prompting the local authorities to close
the walkway. A further four died in the two years preceding that. Its
reputation (or closure) has not hindered the more adventurous – or foolhardy –
visitor, however.
There are always more adventurous tourists to whom Caminito
del Rey is a challenge to be relished rather than their own worst nightmare.
With some knowledge of climbing it is still possible to access the Caminato del
Rey and many do each year.
Image Credit Flickr
User Kozzmen
The local council is trying to secure government funding to
recreate the path to its original 1921 form but there is no work expected till
at least 2014. Until then the pathway remains difficult to get to but still
accessible. How, though, did it get to be built, as high and remote as it is,
in the first place?
Image Credit Flickr
User Magro krIt all goes back to the beginning of the last
century. There were hydroelectric power plants built at the nearby Gaitanejo
and Chorro Falls. Much like the bridge over the Hoover Dam in the USA a way had
to be found to connect the two in order to ensure that the carriage of materials
would not take days. It was also deemed necessary for the regular inspection of
the channel and so the decision was made to construct a walkway. It took a
while –
four years – to build and it was completed to much acclaim and
celebration in 1905.
Image Credit Flickr
User Kozzmen
Image Credit Flickr
user KozzmenIt got its name in 1921. The then King of Spain,
Alfonso XIII, traversed the walkway to open the Conde del Guadalhorve Dam. In
an ancient European tradition the walkway was thereafter named after the monarch
and became the
King’s Little Pathway. When technology and transport
improved years later, the pathway became redundant and fell in to disrepair.
That may have been the end of the story had it not been the replacement of
workers with tourists, eager to experience for themselves the dizzying
narrowness of the pathway, not to mention to superb views it offers.
Image Credit Flickr
User Kozzmen
Until it is restored then the walkway continues to
deteriorate and it is now considered highly dangerous. It is only a single
meter in width and is over three hundred meters above the river below at its
highest. There is virtually no handrail remaining and parts of the walkway have
collapsed. What still remains, though, between the parts still extant, are the
original steel connectors. These it seems are a particular challenge to
climbers who choose to go to the Caminito del Rey.
A climbing latch may be used to use the safety rope which
has been placed there. So, if the climber slips, it would hopefully avoid a
rapid descent to the river below but it can obviously not hold too much weight.
You have to be a very adventurous kind of tourist (or one suspects, simply
completely
bonkers) to venture along the Caminito del Rey nowaday: yet
still they come.
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