Bisse du Ro

In the Middle Ages, this canal built on a rock face brought water to the crops. The route, now perfectly safe, was carved into the rock during the first half of the 15th century. A real source of life, it was carefully maintained by villagers until 1946, when a water supply tunnel was inaugurated. To preserve this route for tourists, the Montana development company decided to take charge of its maintenance.

The Bisse du Ro is a construction about 5.5 km long illustrating truly the difficulties encountered by the inhabitants of our regions at the end of the Middle Ages and the ingenuity they had to demonstrate in the struggle for the water supply necessary for their survival.

Indeed, the bisse crosses several times rocky diagonals, corridors with a smooth tendency, forest on scree, or zones of significant avalanche passages.

When you follow its trail you will discover all this. The bisse is now replaced by a gallery dug to overcome the well-known difficulty of maintaining its flow. Indeed, between leaks and annual damage, it was no longer possible to ensure acceptable safety of use. You therefore take it at the bottom of the dam of Lac de Plans-Mayens and engage on its course in the Riѐre valley. On its first 3 kilometers, even if sometimes impressive, there are no really dangerous spots. Then from point 1598, it is highly recommended to be cautious. You go another 500 meters and leave the Riѐre valley to enter the wild valley of Ertentse.

It is then in this wild, raw and intact mountain that we are able to grasp how much our predecessors fought their whole lives to get water for their houses, their crops as well as to pasture their animals during the hot summer seasons while in the villages the fodder was harvested that would allow passing the winter.

This Ertentse valley is a place which still, even if it is more accessible via Ayent and Tseuzier, awakens in the hearts of the local people strong feelings linked to the work of the ancestors.