Col de la Morte and the Ornon

The local tourist office here has a booklet entitled 'Cyclo en Oisans', with lots of suggested rides. All the usual ones are in there, of course, as well as one called 'Le Tour par le Plateau Matheysin'. This is a loop of about 100 km, from Bourg, that goes over the Ornon and the Col de la Morte. I was looking for one last fairly big ride before going home, and this looked like a good candidate.

Shawn suggested riding it in the opposite direction to the booklet. That way I could ride down the main road towards Grenoble, rather than up it, definitely preferable given the traffic. With that advice in mind, I duly set off on the usual time trial across to Rochetaillée, but instead of heading for Allemont, stayed with the main road to Grenoble. This descends gently but steadily alongside  La Romanche river, and through villages based around some of the very first French hydroelectric schemes. It's a fairly long and tedious section, but at least reasonably fast, despite the nagging headwind.

Finally, at Séchilienne, it was time to leave the main road, and head up towards the Ski area at Station de l'Alpe du Grand Serre, which is the top of the Col de la Morte. It quickly became apparent that doing the ride in this direction was a really good idea. The bottom half of the climb, some 7 km or so, had been top dressed, but not yet swept. It was covered in patches of gravel. Not good for descending.

The Col de la Morte is quite a challenging climb. It's ramps are normally in the 8's and 9's and occasionally surpasses 10%. It starts in a forest, but further up, views over the Romanche valley and the road to Grenoble appear.

The route to Grenoble

The ride eases towards the col itself, as the valley opens out and the ski station is reached. It's all very quiet at this time of year.

At the Col de La Morte

At this point, there is still some 60 km to go. The route from the col is initially downhill and fast for a while, but then becomes rolling and has a few little climbs within it. Thoughts about how long it might take to get back began to loom large in my thinking, especially with needing to climb the Ornon. I needn't have worried, as it turned out.

For this section, overall, the route gradually descends through Lavaldens and splits to become the D114A down to Oris-en-Rattier, before meeting the D26 in Siévoz. It remains a mainly rolling, downhill route all the way to Valbonnais and Entraigues, where it finally starts uphill. Again the gradients are generally quite modest at of a couple of percent.

Le Perier

Even when the first signs for the Col d'Ornon appear, the gradients shown are shown are small. I kept thinking that this couldn't last, and indeed it doesn't.

Rush hour on the Ornon. Just like Wales!

At one point, a large herd of sheep were being driven down the road. It's getting to the time of year where they are moved off the mountains, and taken to market or to lower pastures for the winter. Deep within this flock was a large goat with enormous horns.

The 45th Parallel crosses the Col d'Ornon.

A few km from the top of the Ornon, there is a set of fairly long switchbacks where the gradient finally gets up in to the 7% region. A couple of km from the top, the road crosses the 45th parallel, or 45 degrees north as we tend to term it. In the field next to the road are two lines of stones, arranged in what looks like really low dry stone walls, heading off in roughly the direction of the parallel.

Seemed rude not to celebrate it!

The final approach to the Ornon is easy from this side. The total amount of climbing is much less than coming up from Bourg.

Last Col of the day

There is quite a lot of work going on now on the road down to Bourg. They are laying cables to connect the various communities on the Ornon and the nearby valleys for better communications. This involves digging a trench in the middle of the uphill lane for the entire length of the climb. Fortunately, it doesn't really affect the descent. It's as much fun as ever.

At the bottom of the climb, I took my jacket off as usual, and started cycling towards Bourg. Within a couple of hundred metres I realised that I still needed it, and put it back on! And that just left the time trial across the valley back to Le Clapier. That was enough to tell me that my legs are now officially empty and it's nearly time to go home.

The Activity for this ride is available on Strava.