A mustard pod and some medicines expired since “the late 1980s”. For now, here are the only tangible clues available to trace the owner of a flashy pink backpack found over the weekend. Not at a bus stop, nor even at the edge of an ordinary popular hiking trail. But at more than 2,500 meters above sea level, at the bottom of the “Arcouzan” glacier, as the Ariégeois of Couserans call it, could be a character from a novel. He is where you least expect him, isolated and alone of his kind, in this eastern part of the Pyrenees. The one that a geographer dared to call “simple snowfield” in the 1950s is not so inert. It follows its very slow course, at the foot of the north-eastern slope of Mont Valier, which gives it its official name but which only culminates at an altitude of 2,838 meters when other higher peaks do not have the chance to to be able to “cover” their glacier. It is also “miniature”, with its barely two hectares in size. Which doesn’t stop him from being heroic. According to specialist Pierre René, the Pyrenean glaciology association, who devoted a bibliography to it, its thickness and length melted less quickly at the turn of the century than those of its large “fellows” in the massif. Finally, the Mont Valier glacier knows how to maintain its share of mystery. To reach it, the road is long and complicated.
An expedition with volunteer “sherpas” every two years
However, since 2011, at the initiative of Ariège Pyrenees Natural Park (PNPA), a “major expedition” leaves, generally every two years, at the beginning of autumn, to examine the Ariège ice jewel. Volunteer “Sherpas”, glaciologists, hydrogeologists, surveyors loaded with instruments, guides… the troop spends three days of walking and two nights in a refuge. The big biennial trip took place last weekend.
The measurements taken, once exploited, will show whether the glacier, despite its legendary Lilliputian resistance, continues to lose an average of two meters in thickness per year. But what we can say immediately is that it also hides an enigma. It fits in a flashy pink backpack that the ice has prevented from getting too weathered. “We saw it at the bottom of the glacier, released by the melting,” says Matthieu Cruège, director of the PNPA. The 26 members of the expedition were initially frozen with fear, for fear of also finding a body. But no, nothing worrying in the immediate surroundings.
A mustard pod and expired medicine
The backpack was dug up “with an ice axe”. And emptied of its contents: a windbreaker, a glove, a hat, an ice screw, a carabiner, a survival blanket. No papers unfortunately, but boxes of medicine and a pod of mustard. Their expiry dates date back to the end of the 1980s. “I decided to take it to return it to its owner,” continues Matthieu Cruège.
Since then, he has the impression of being “in an investigation”. With clues, like these straps “fixed short, perhaps for a woman’s back”. With doors that must also be closed: a call to the gendarmerie, just to find out about unsolved disappearances in the area. Not to mention the false leads. ” Yesterday [mardi], a man called me. He was quite moved and thought it was the backpack he had fallen in 1986,” relates the “detective”.
The person wanted, like most, to reach the glacier from the top. A fellow hiker diverted his attention for a brief moment and a gust of wind knocked his backpack into the void. Except that the latter was red. Investigations are therefore continuing. So if in your family, in your group of friends, there is a legend of a pink backpack blown away by the wind on a peak in the Pyrenees more than thirty years ago, you know where to turn.