Aneto

About

Aneto is the highest mountain in the Pyrenees and in Aragon, Spain's third-highest mountain, reaching a height of 3,404 metres (11,168 feet). It is in the Spanish province of Huesca, the northernmost of three Aragonese provinces, 6 kilometres (4 miles) south of the France–Spain border. It forms the southernmost part of the Maladeta massif. Aneto is located in the Posets-Maladeta Natural Park, in the municipality of Benasque, Huesca province, an autonomous community of Aragon, Spain. It is part of the Maladeta massif and is located in the Benasque valley. It consists of Paleozoic terrain of a granitic nature and Mesozoic materials. Its northern side holds the largest glacier in the Pyrenees, covering 79.6 hectares (197 acres) in 2005; it is shrinking rapidly due to warming summer temperatures and decreasing winter precipitations over the 20th century – it covered 106.7 ha in 1981, and over 200 ha in the 19th century. It is estimated that it has lost more than half of its surface in the last 100 years, and may disappear around 2050. Shrinkage has continued at an increasing rate, reducing to 69.3 ha in 2011 and 50.0 ha in 2020 (and reducing in thickness by 8.5 metres in this period), and to 48.1 ha in 2022.

Initially, the mountain did not even have a name. There are indications that the shepherds and hunters from the southern valleys referred to it as Malheta or Malahita or Punta. It was also previously known as La Malahite. The first traveller who is recorded as having seen it from the port (or pass) of Benasque, Louis Ramond de Carbonnières, simply described its appearance as "needles of ice" in 1787. The highest point of the Pyrenees eventually inherited the name of a village on its south-eastern side, Aneto. The French, on hearing the Aragonese pronunciation of "Aneto", retained the last two clearly accentuated phonetic syllables, "ne" and "tu", ignoring the first syllable "a". Based on such oral transcription, the French name "Netou" came to exist along with several historical variants: Nelto, Nettou, Anetthou, Annetton, Anelthou, Nethom or Aréthon, all used by various cartographers. Even though the summit and slopes are entirely within Spanish territory, the first extensive studies of the Pyrenees - and the only ones for the following 100 years - were French ones from the 19th century - starting with the very detailed study by Jean Daniel François Schrader (1844–1924) in 1874. So these names were the toponyms that were then used. It took Émile Belloc's renowned work on the Pyrenees (notably on its hydrology, glaciology and etymology) to establish the name of Aneto as the official toponym; by 1898, he referred to it only by this name.

Some 2 km away on its north-west fringe lies the Maladeta peak that, though not being among the five highest peaks in the environment, gave its name to the entire massif. It subsequently earned the greatest interest from climbers, especially in the early 18th century. Mainly, it was a matter of perspective, since from the natural entrance to the valley or arriving from France, its top is in the foreground, while the crest hides the true extent of its eastern neighbour, taller and with larger glaciers. Only when Friedrich von Parrot reached the top of the Maladeta in 1817, came the realisation that both Aneto as well as its neighbours the Pico del Medio, the Punta de Astorg, the Pico Maldito and la Aguja Schmidt Endell towered higher. Until then, the Monte Perdido had been considered the highest. However, the uncovering of the highest point of the Pyrenees had hardly been accomplished when the mountain began to earn a reputation, as several glacial disasters, some fatal, dissipated the interest in crowning it - notably with the death of Luchon Barrau, considered the dean and leading expert in the area. He fell into a crack in the ice on Maladeta. This caused shock among the natives, who, already fearful of venturing on the glacier, became genuinely scared of the mountain they considered cursed.

Adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA). Photography via Wikimedia Commons.