On Saturday Ken suggested the south-east face of the Pointe de la Combe Bronsin. I’d last ski toured to the summit back about 20 years before but from the north side.

Pointe de la Combe Bronsin

We checked on the Web and someone had skied the route on Friday, starting from la Pautaz above Biollay at 1500m. The road is narrow so we decided to get their early. The access is via Albertville then the col de la Madelaine road taking the turn to le Biollay before Celliers (where the col is closed for the winter).

Pic de Lachat

The route climbs a north-east ridge from la Pautaz to the left of the hairpins to arrive at Haut-Gentil (1775m) where there is a chalet. Continue under high voltage cables to reach a ridge at 2000m. The normal route traverses under the south facing bowl of the Bronsin but instead we climbed a short summit ridge to reach the hanging south-east bowl. The refreeze wasn’t great, about 8-10cm of hard snow on very soft snow. We reached the summit at 9h15 and started skiing down about 20 minutes later on what was already transformed snow. Skiing down at 9am would not have been out of the question.

Le Mont blanc

We had a choice in the hanging bowl of continuing down to cliffs than traversing over some grass and heather into a short couloir or skiing the ridge we’d climbed up. We opted for the 2nd, safer option then took the north facing slopes under the col du Loup before reskiing for a 100m of vertical back to the ridge at 2000m.

Gd Pic de la Lauziere, from the summit

From here it was just a case of pointing the skis downhill on rapidly softening snow. We were surprised to see a large club group heading out at 11am on what would soon be very slushy snow.

As a note, I could punch my ski pole down all 100cm of snowpack to ground level in a lot of places.

Yes that was a great morning, and I thought we handled the planning and the decisions together very well.
My first time doing Bronsin by way of Col du Loup (but not my last)—with more snow I’d gladly do the counter-clockwise loop up over the Col and down the longer SE face run to finish with the hiking traverse to le Biollay.

davidof - 27 March 2011 04:32 PM

The road is narrow

One guy drove up to the snow-blockage point (lat/long N45.51016 E6.43565) near la Pautaz to discover that there was no room to park or to even turn around—so he had to back down the road. If you want to avoid that potential, there’s a wider spot in the road about (N45.50737 E6.43447) which is about 0.5 km and 35 vertical meters below the snow-blockage point. 

It’s still a fairly narrow road (even already up only to le Biollay), but at least it’s nice to know you can chose to stop at a turnaround point (which works unless too many people are parked there already).

I also was rather amazed at how late some people were starting up—especially with avy forecasts warning that danger was rising during the day. Even apart from avalanche riski, it’s hard to imagine it was much fun to be skiing down in deep mush later in the day.

Ken

Just 35 meters vertical lower? It hardly seems worth struggling up further to have to make a u-turn on ice. Still as you said you have to know where the snow starts, but the 1500m point seems to be fairly consistent for March from the trip reports I’ve seen elsewhere.

Good choice of route Ken.

davidof - 28 March 2011 10:55 PM

Just 35 meters vertical lower?

Well it’s about half a kilometer distance, so 35 meters is about 7% steepness grade. Not super-steep, but in a similar range with lots of the famous paved mountain road climbs in France. (e.g. much of the Alpe d’Huez road is around 7%, except for the bottom three switchbacks).

Ken