Pico de Mijas

Kevin Mawdesley

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The Pico de Mijas stands a few miles inland from the Mediterranean, rising impressively above Alheurin el Grande. The walk is an arduous but straightforward climb to a decent altitude (1,151 metres) mostly through pine forest before emerging to superb views along the coast to the Sierra Nevada and Gibraltar and inland to El Chorro and El Torcal.

The walk starts on broad dirt roads, working upwards through the pine forest. At the weekend this lower area is very popular with families for picnicking and other activities, but you soon find yourself above the crowd ceiling and into the quiet of the forest.

A long climb steadily upwards brings brief respite at Puerto de la Encina before continuing on the now sandy track to emerge almost at the summit. The summit itself is a bit cluttered with meteorological paraphernalia, but the views are magnificent and you now know the climb was worth it. To the east you can look across the Bay of Malaga to the Sierra Nevada 100km away, easy picked out when snow-capped in winter; to the west it's possible to look to Gibraltar, but more immediately the mountains behind Torremolinos and Marbella, so rich in walking potential.

It is possible to return reasonably quickly the way you came, but after such a long climb we preferred what we referred to as the social way down, taking the dirt road to the east. This is a gentle descent on a broad, smooth track with no concerns for direction-finding, on which it's quite easy for several people to walk side by side and converse or to enjoy the slowly changing views across the Guadalhorce Valley to the national parks of El Chorro and El Torcal beyond.

Spain - Southern Spain - Malaga - Malaga

Features

Birds, Great Views, Mountains, Wildlife, Woodland
10/25/2016 - Tore Bermingrud

Good route description, though the start point has gone through some changes since 2010 we had no problems, we just parked the car were the dirt road started (Oct.25th 2016), followed that road and joined the route at waymark 3. It is recommended to follow the route strictly (form waymark 11) in the return for two reasons: 1) our legs were a bit tired after 800 m up, so it was good to follow the road that was slightly descending instead of taking to stony path which was heavy descending 2) the view from that road was great - you could see all over the plains, and saw Alhaurin el Grande from birds perspective!

5/23/2015 - Peter moon