Nepal has its Sherpas, but for hiking the Hautes-Pyrénées, Eric Rayman discovers, there's no better companion than the sociable, self-sufficient ass

We were following a steep trail through a pine forest in the Parc National des Pyrénées. For four hours we had been zigzagging up a mountain. The day before, we had hiked through cornfields in the Adour River valley under a sun so hot and bright I thought the corn would pop. Now, as we made our ascent, the air was a cool, wispy mist—a cloud, you would say, if you were looking up at it from the valley. When the mist parted, we could see the mountain peaks in Spain.

Cabeilh (pronounced ka-bay and meaning, appropriately enough, "strong character" in the ancient Occitane language of the region) was an excellent hiking companion. She was carrying our gear, hung on a wooden packsaddle, and she was picking her way along the rocky path at a brisk pace, stopping occasionally to snack on a clump of weeds or thistles.

The trail wound past granite boulders on its way to a glacial lake. At times we would interrupt solemn convocations of mountain sheep, which would reluctantly part to let us pass. Cabeilh kept up her pace.

Every summer we spend a few weeks with our boys in France. We have vacationed in and know pretty well all the usual places—Paris, Provence, the Loire Valley, the Cote d'Azur—in the world's most-touristed country. One day last summer, some French friends showed us pictures of their family camping trip with a donkey, and we realized...well, we realized we hadn't done that.

Our friends explained that throughout France there are farms which rent donkeys (ânes) to hikers and campers. They introduced us to the Web site of the Fédération Nationale Anes et Randonnées (the FNAR, or National Federation for Donkey Trekking; www.ane-et-rando.com). There, we found links to more than 60 French farms and ranches where donkeys, cherished by their owners, are raised and, in what must be the pre-Industrial Age equivalent of Hertz and Avis, rented out to backpackers. FNAR's slogan? Not "We Try Harder" but "The Trails Have Long Ears."

As in English, donkey-related words in French often have asinine connotations. Une ânerie, for example, is a blunder. Most of these rent-a-donkey Web sites give the creatures cute names that pun on the French word for donkey. There's Vagabond'ane, Camp'anes, Pays'ane, Volc'anes, and, my favorite, Les Ânes en Culottes (pictured: two donkeys in blue-and-white culottes).

We were as overwhelmed by the variety of places to hike and breeds of donkeys to rent as we sometimes are by the cheese or wine menu at a three-toque restaurant. So we followed the route taken by our friends and found ourselves at La Flânerie, an eighteenth-century farmhouse in the Gascony region. Here, Nicole and Jean Louis Guyot have raised Pyrenean donkeys such as Cabeilh for almost 20 years and, more recently, have begun to offer lodging and delicious communal dinners for travelers like us.