Sunday I was leading an FFME group to the Epaule du Cornafion by the south-west bowl in the Vercors mountain range from Villard des Lans. The route has a toponeige rating of 2.2/E1/F and is 850m vertical. The original plan was to ski tour in the Belledonne but the weather was very poor with snow in Grenoble at 7am. Even driving to the Vercors was difficult. The route starts from the ex-ski area of les Cochettes. There is a sign asking people if they want to buy the ski lifts and piste basher. Still on this 7th of March there was plenty of snow on the pistes.
les Cochettes
The route climbs to the summit of the ski slopes then you turn right (south) to ski down a little run of about 50 meters to rejoin the summer trail at 1260 meters. In fact you can reach this trail without the descent by climbing through a small section of trees (worth noting for the ski down to avoid a little climb). The forest is a new plantation with lots of evenly spaced trees but very pleasant when it is snowing heavily. The pine needles were filtering the snow so just a fine dust was falling on the forest flood. After about 500m you reach a crossroads and here you turn right and stick to the main path. The forest opens out into a clearing then there is a short wooded section before reaching the Roybon refuge (ONF) at around 1450 meters.
la Pisse-Vache
This was a welcome stop for our group. After the refuge follow the trail to the n/e in the direction of Lurbeillet-Chaulange and the nicely named Pissevache spring. We chose to climb up a ridge on exiting the forest, then a traverse to the left as the ridge gets steeper before taking a central ridge to the summit of the Cornafion. At the summit it was blowing a gale and visibility was about 20 meters so we stuck to the ridge for the ski down, about 5cm of windblow fresh snow on a hard surface before joining the combe de Pissevache and the combe de Lurbeillet and some nice gentle powder skiing through a series of glades. You rejoin the Roybon trail at around 1300m just above a barn.
Avalanche Risk was 2. About 10cm of Fresh snow during the morning.
