I Can't Design Your Trek Over WhatsApp

“Hi, we’re a group of 4…”

“Hi, we’re a group of 4. We’d like to do something in the Pyrenees in July. What do you recommend?”

That’s the whole message.

Sometimes a second one arrives: “Nothing too hard. But with good views.”

Then they wait for me to send them a trek.

I can’t.

It’s not that I don’t want to

It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s that I’d be guessing.

I spent 12 years in aerospace engineering. Nobody there designed anything without the requirements first. You can’t build a satellite from “make it fly, not too heavy.”

A trek works the same way.

I need two things from you.

One: what you can actually do

“Nothing too hard” means one thing to a guy who runs half marathons. It means something else to a guy who hasn’t walked more than 10 km since 2019.

They both send me the exact same message.

If I get it wrong one way, you’re on day two with your knees screaming down a 1,200 m descent, wondering why you paid for this.

If I get it wrong the other way, you spend six days on paths that never ask anything of you. You come home bored.

Either way, the trip fails. And that one’s on me.

Two: what you’d actually like

Something technical, with a ridge and some scrambling? A long valley walk, hut to hut? Lakes? Waterfalls? A summit you can point at from the car?

The Pyrenees has all of it.

That’s the problem.

You can’t tell me all that in two WhatsApp messages. Most people don’t even know it themselves until someone asks the right questions.

That’s what the call is for

That’s what the call is for. Twenty minutes. I ask, you talk. The way people used to.

Around minute twelve, someone always says: “Actually, what I’d really love is…”

That’s your trek. Right there.

See our Pyrenees routes

If you want to see which routes we do in the Pyrenees, they’re all right here.

Talk soon, Alberto

P.S. Please don’t message me asking for “info.” Be ready to jump on a call. It’s faster, and the trek you end up with will be yours, not a guess.