Walking through a snow tunnel in August

Although it is mid August, there are still quite a number of snow fields in the high parts of Sierra Nevada. A couple of days ago, we followed the Río Chico of Bérchules upstream. Before we reached the actual source of this river, we decided to follow a small stream northwestward as we were curious to see which flowers we would see along the edges. We saw a couple of really pretty endemic plants, like Veronica turbicula, and many ´estrellas de las nieves´ or snow stars (Plantago nivalis). But the most impressive thing we encountered was a snow tunnel formed by the melt water. It had a length of about thirty metres and we could actually walk through it. This was really refreshing because of the lower temperature inside and the water that was dripping down. We had actually crossed this same snow field three weeks earlier, without realising how we missed out on the sheer beauty of the carved walls underneath.