Having done the Heart of the Rond (the French call it the ‘salopar’ or bitch) a few times we thought that there was a potential route down the ridge to the skiers left. The Heart of the Rond is a nice line, but it involves about 60m of descending a couloir that is about 180cm wide, so a sideslip with tips and tails touching all the way, followed by a small drop which is never nice.
Our alternative did involve a small rock section on the ridge that we did need to be roped up for, but it looks like we might have been able to traverse across a bit lower down on the right of the ridge to avoid this, next time.
It isn’t a line to be undertaken lightly, just getting to the col involves some steep and exposed skiing in the sort of area where you don’t really want to fall. Then from the ridge on down it is into E4 terrain, definite no fall zone. The skiing is all around 45 degrees, so it probably rates as a 5.1 or 5.2 on the toponeige scale.
The top section was a nice little boulder field with lots of lines through and around the rocks, then it opened up into a steep face, all above the big cliff at the bottom. There is a tiny couloir to get through the cliff at its lowest point. The snow was bullet proof here, and straight lining it wasn’t that inviting, so we tried rigging up an abseil from a snow bollard, it ripped through though, so we ended up down climbing it.
In my five years in Cham, skiing the Rond and the Cosmiques regularly I had never seen any tracks on this line, and it’s not in the guidebook, so we think it might be a first descent, but can’t be sure.
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