La Tosa d’Alp
La Tosa or Tossa d’Alp is perhaps the most used mountain in the Cerdanya due to the fact that the Alp-2500 ski resort is located there, which includes the ski resorts of La Molina and Masella. It is very popular because a number of ski lifts, including a cable car, lead to the culminating plateau, where the “Niu de l’Àliga” refuge is located. However, if you leave the slopes a little, this human presence disappears and you enter into Cadí-Moixeró Natural Park. The overview from the summit, on the other hand, covers the whole of Cerdanya and a good part of Catalonia.
Technical Data
Access: From Alp take the road that leads to the reception of the ski resort of Masella. Then continue to another road on the right until the Coma Oriola car park ends.
Start: Coma Oriola car park.
Difficulty: Easy
Maximum altitude: 2,537 m
Elevation gain: 615 m
Total duration: 2 hours (1 hour one way / 1 hour return)
Time of year: Spring, summer and autumn.
Notes: In winter it is a hard ascent due to the beginning of the snow, with a final section where, if the snow is very hard, the ice ax and crampons will be useful.
Route
From the car park at Coma Oriola (1,940 m) you have to go to the hole of the same name, but leave the ski slope that runs along it to the left. On the first grassy landing (2,000 m, 5 min) take a path on the right, initially blurred by the passage of cattle. This path skirts a limestone buttress and enters a black pine forest. Signposted with landmarks, it immediately gains altitude with a steep and constant slope through the forest. When you get out, you will find the Prat de la Tosa (2,200 m, 45 min), a plateau with rocks around it.
Turn left and continue along the bottom of a dry stream. The top of La Tosa with its TV antenna is visible to the left. You cross the lowlands of Urús and then, making loops between the rocky areas, you reach the ridge of the Pedrusques mountain range, from which you can get to Moixeró, the Cadí and the Pedraforca. Following this ridge to the left is the summit of Tossa de Das (2,448 m, 1 h 15 min), with a good view of the Fontllebrera hole, on the right.
Along the same ridge, without obstacles, you go down to the pass where the remains of the miners’ hut are and cross the old track that led to La Mena, a manganese mine. The final ascent is undertaken, with a notable but short incline, to the TV antenna and shortly afterwards to the geodesic turret at the top of La Tosa (2,537 m, 1 h 30 min). From up here, on a clear day, you can see the Collserola antenna and, to the west, the pre-Pyrenees mountain systems of Aragon, such as the Turbó, the Cotiella or the Guara mountain range.
Map and altimetry
