Stage 17 of the 2023 Tour de France on Wednesday 19th July culminates on the feared Col de la Loze, but earlier in the day comes another Alpine classic – the Cormet de Roselend. Join us for an ascent of this majestic climb in the Rhône-Alpes…
Pain de sportif is a brioche baked with dried fruits and nuts, and one most deserving of its name and favour among the cyclists of the Savoie department.
Because here is where giants rub shoulders, where Croix de Fer faces off with the Galibier as Iseran looks on, Petit Saint-Bernard at her heel. This part of France requires dense calories, and that’s precisely where any rider looking to tackle the Cormet de Roselend should begin: ordering a slice of pain de sportif from Beaufort’s favourite bakery, Pouilloux Boulangerie.
Beaufort, of course, is most famous for its cheese, and though it seems desperately unlikely as you sit on your top tube just shaded by Pouilloux’s red awnings, you’d swear you can detect a pungent bass note to the pine-fresh air. You’d also swear that the road was already nosing upwards. And you’d be right.
Col hopping
The Cormet de Roselend’s stats are more enticing than alarming (‘cormet’, by the way, is local speak for ‘col’). The climb official starts at 745m in Beaufort and culminates just shy of 2,000m some 20km later.
The average gradient is therefore 6%, which makes it one of the more sedate climbs in the area. But that’s not why cyclists – those in the know, anyway – come here. Rather, they ride for the postcard beauty.
As you roll serenely through the first couple of hairpins you’ll be wondering what all the fuss is about. In fact, by the time you see the little yellow and white sign with the tell-tale cartoon cyclist and the number five, you might begin to worry that the climb is a little, well… dull.
Yes, the adjacent stream has been babbling obligingly; yes, the road surface is undeniably good, but the view has been monotonously the same, flanked by a zoetrope of spindly conifers straining their tips skywards in regimental fashion.
Still, depending when you come to the southeast of France, the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes can be searingly hot, so this level of coverage may well prove advantageous.
Road signs by the kilometre six marker look more promising. A first proper mention is given to the Barrage de Roselend, the dam that helps give this climb its beautiful reputation. The red triangular ‘verglas fréquent’ sign showing a car skidding, and the accompanying snow chains warning is also encouraging in that it lets you know high elevation is on its way.
Gradually the sky-forest ratio opens up, and with it a view over the smooth Alpine pastures the Beaufort dairy herds keep so diligently landscaped. One bend further and finally you can see charcoal peaks pocketed with snow.
It’s not the col you’ve come for, but the intersection of this and a road to your right marks the 1,605m point that is the top of the Col de Méraillet.
Faith restores
The road flattens as you pass Le Chalet de Roselend hotel, whose rear terrace overlooks the Lac de Roselend, and which depending on how hard you’re attacking this climb may well be a pleasant coffee stop.
Depending on the time of year the dam may be exposing its banks, which today are sandy scree but once upon a time were the same verdant greens you see all around you. This is because it’s no lake but rather a reservoir created when this mountain cleft was stoppered by the Barrage de Roselend to the lake’s westerly edge.
On 6th May 1960 the valley’s pastures disappeared under the water, so too the village of Roselend once nestling within, now a rural Atlantis submerged 130m below the lake’s surface. The reason was hydroelectricity – at capacity this expanse holds the equivalent water to create around 500 million kWh of electricity, or enough to charge nearly a billion e-bikes.
As you round the northernmost edge an unexpected sight appears – a stone church. This portly little structure looks incongruously new, as indeed it is. Its forbear dates back to the 14th century but was submerged along with Roselend village, and this is a modernised replica, albeit the bell is original (there were once in fact two, but one was stolen in the 1980s and has never been found).
It’s all exceedingly pleasant at this stage, and really very easy going, the road barely a handful of per cent, leaving you plenty of time to look around and absorb the deliciously Alpine way the ice-blue water laps at the feet of emerald land. Soon, however, you’ll wish you could tap into some of those latent kilowatt hours.
Betwixt the rock
On the eastern side of the lake the road sharpens in two sweeps of a hairpin, ramping from a handful of per cent up into double digits. The payoff is rapid height gain plus a doubling back of the road, which means you can finally see Lac de Roselend’s dam.
This buttressed grey expanse sweeps pleasingly between a distant cleft in the mountains, hemming in its waters. Yet no sooner is the view apparent than it is gone. The Cormet de Roselend road has taken an unexpected dive between a cleft of its own.
Emerging from between the rock faces is like happening upon a new land. The feel of the air is different – cooler, crisper and with a lick of wind. There is water in the form of a small river several metres below, but beyond that the look is much more like dale or moor. It’s craggy; on the wrong weather day this level of exposure would be bleak.
A refuge and car park are the first signs of human life for a while, and could mark the top, but the road has other ideas. It looks at times flat, but this is a falsehood eyes are led into by not being able to see where the road is going.
It tucks itself in and out of rocky bumps, but these soon peel away in favour of meadow and the space to observe snow-spattered peaks.
Finally a large sign appears, built into substantial stone and adorned with its own shingle roof. Merci de votre visite et à bientôt en Beaufortain it says cheerily. Just behind it is a red-white striped delicatessen of sorts, selling sandwiches and the legendary local cheese. There’s that smell again. And then there’s that sign you’ve been looking for: ‘Cormet de Roselend, altitude 1,968m’.
It’s probably a few metres more than your bike computer has registered but scalps based on elevation were never the point here anyway. You came for the views and you were rewarded with one of the most tranquil climbs the Alps has to offer.
Wonderful ride beautifully captured in James’s excellent report. Easy to get a sweat on even when the weather is cool.
I live out that way and it has become my favourite route. (There’s also a gravel version…very tough).
Cheers