Historians are undecided about who put Cruz de Ferro here or why, but it went up in about the 11th century.

I got up a little early and practically ran to this point to get to it before it got overrun. It was still pretty crowded. Lots of people come to see it, even outside of doing the Camino. In one of the shots you can see the parking lot across the street where cars and vans who drive people up here park.

The idea behind the stones is to symbolically leave behind whatever you brought with you that you no longer want to carry going forward.