Real World Riding

The Tour du Mont Blanc

This is an account of a 5 day adventure following the route of the famous Tour du Mont Blanc walking route, starting with some of the planning that went into the trip, to hopefully encourage and also enable others to set up an adventure of their own in the Alps. Many of the lessons I learned are applicable to adventure riding in the Alps as well as to the tour specifically, so if you're interested, please read on.

First Principles

My initial decision was to travel light and therefore to travel from hut to hut. This meant that it was cheaper as a solo rider to fly than to drive (as the van wouldn't cut the accommodation cost by much) and also 2 days quicker and less exhausting. I'd also decided not to use a self-guided service or luggage transfer company as this either cost an arm and a leg or limited my accommodation options (or both).

The Idea

There was a slot in my summer that needed an adventure, and having known a couple of riders who'd done the route, and watched the Matt Hunter video of riding the route, this route was definitely on my radar. I watched a few other videos on youtube in the spring, and this idea was rapidly taking root and growing. Eventually I found a slot in early September (which is one of the recommended times to ride the TMB) and it became inevitable that I would give this a go if I could

I found the TMB website and checked my route against availlability of the huts (which needed some re-writing at this stage). It's worth noting that the TMB for walkers is generally a 10-11 day walk, so there was still plenty of discovery to the trip.

In terms of kit, I checked heights and terrain and prevailing weather and packed accordingly and spent some time thinking about likely mechanicals as well as how much I'd kick myself if I had an unlikely mechanical and hadn't packed the kit to fix it. I packed as lightly as possible, and used pretty much everything I took, but recognise I could have packed differently (I'll talk a bit about this in the conclusions learning section following the account).

Day Zero - Getting to Chamonix

The top section was lovely flowy granite tracks with some slabby sections, but eventually it turned downhill towards Col du Montets and rapidly brought about the start of the change of the route. The descent fairly quickly headed down through boulders and large blocky sections, rendering it effectively un-rideable for large sections. Looking back on it, I'd recommend missing this section if you've come for the riding, but live with it if you want to see the mountains at their best, the view is truly spectacular.

Carrying down most of the descent to the col was a bit of a reality check (especially the two short scrambling sections!) but soon enough the rideable lower section popped up and I could let rip on some lovely singletrack with good visibility through the fields of Tre Le Champ, past the totem poles .. (random!) and on to the short road climb to Le Tour and the next uplift.

Very quickly this path transformed into steep rocky doubletrack and the pace picked up. Not so much that I missed the Marmots by the trail, but still a rapid loss of height below the point of Croix de Fer down toward the forests above the tiny hamlet of Le Peuty. The guidebook said the trail steepened once in the woods with multiple switchbacks, and it wasn't lying. Losing count of the turns in the woods, I concentrated on each as hard as the first as they swept the tops of cliffs and gulleys as the trail continued down into the valley.

Le Tour from the Grand Balcon with the ascent to Col De Balme and the Swiss Border above (a bit of descending to do from here)

This ride-push-carry rose steadily for quite some time, crossing a secluded alp and farm buildings and moved up to the magical moment where I broached Collet Portalo, out of the trees and into the sun, facing the mountains ahead, and peering down a sweet single track heading towards the remote farm (and cafe!!) of Alp Bovine.

I'd been pre-warned about the cows at Bovine, so when they approached I kept my distance and took the bike into the cafe enclosure, memories of my conversation with a traumatised walker the night before reliving the moment he realised he'd been cornered and was promptly, and thoroughly licked by a big black massively horned cow – he still couldn't get over how big its tongue was.

The trail from Bovine continued round the mountainside on a long strip of beautiful dusty singletrack, eventually turning into steep dusty switchbacks heading down into the next valley. Crossing this (often on foot) I then gained the trail heading round towards the Champex villages, traversing and climbing through a neat and exclusive hamlet of very expensive Swiss houses, onwards into Champex en Lac for a quick lunch following a comprehensive supermarket raid, and then dropping down into the Swiss Val Ferret.

At this point I found signs for the mountainbike version of the TMB, signed from here to the Italian border. However I (and others too it seems) made the 'genius' decision to stay on the TMB main route through a wood sculpture park, which was pretty well done actually, but through so much wooded and rooty trail that much of the scultpures were admired from foot.

Up near the top of the Swiss Val Ferret in the blazing sun

The hamlets astride the Swiss Val Ferret contrasted with the well heeled homes of the Swiss rich above Champex, populated by farms and small houses dotted with only the occasional posh villa. Moving up the valley, the heat steadily rose to the point that for me the best decision was to remain with the road sections of the TMB and steadily plod while trying not to overheat. The option of following the same valley along mountain path and mountain bike trail was simply not there for me if I wanted to make it to the top of the valley in time. I still regret not riding this trail, but not much. Having completed the route I know that I would have been much later getting to the hostel, and in a much worse state – I really struggled with the heat and lack of any wind, it was the best choice.

The villages and valley continued upward and remained beautiful, and the residents although few in evidence were friendly and encouraging, leaving me only to complete the zig zag vehicle track up to Le Peule, and my accommodation for the night in an old converted cattle shed and yurt....... It was a lot nicer than it sounds.

Despite being a sideline to a booming dairy business, the hostel was very nice, and miraculously we all managed to survive with two toilets and two showers between about 40 of us. My only complaint would have to be that my dinner was pretty small and very cheese based, which with my slight lactose intolerance made for a none too happy digestive system.....

Promised amazing views from the guidebook, it was unfortunately very cloudy, and extremely windy too. I sheltered there by the border marker with a German couple for a moment, before it was clearly time to head down into Italy along the thin ribbon of singletrack in front of me; the unmistakeable trail down to Rifugio Elizabetta.

There are a few unmistakeable sections of trail that cropped up in almost all the good YouTube videos, and after a few minutes of dashing along the beautiful winding trail ahead, the cloud parted enough to confirm that I was now on one of them. This trail, beading wildly contains several logs laid out in an attempt to contain walkers to one trail while they head (if going in the same direction as me) towards an ever-narrowing point of a spur forcing its way into the massive glacier topped valley ahead and below.

Here I wound my way down gingerly aware of the consequences of a fall until the spit of land narrowed enough to force the path to change direction by 90 degrees and headed back to the relative safety of the back of the valley. These zig zags while all rideable made for a very focussing piece of riding until, back in the main body of the valley, it approached the top of the meadows, and became a wider trail with switchbacks, and a fantastic view up and down the valley, up to the peak of Ferret above bordered by a huge glacier, and all the way down to Courmayeur and the Itailan Monte Bianco de Courmayeur and all the spectacular peaks in-between forming the right hand wall of the valley I was descending into.

The Italian Val Ferret from the 'must make' corner. The route drops to the valley floor, heads along for about 1km, then up again

A few last high speed switchbacks and I was deposited at the relative civilisation of the giant Rifugio Elizabetta where it was only right to have a quick coffee to try to sort out my cheese addled interior. From here a higher speed descent on the vehicle track to the bottom of the valley was in order, mostly just to miss the millions (maybe an exaggeration) of tourists all over the TMB path down to the road-head. From here, down a short road to the next Rifugio, and then on to the next climb of the day, onto the left hand side of the valley for the journey to Courmayeur.

Tough pushing up the first couple of hundred metres of the trail spat me out at an old farm, and brought me to the traversing trail that was to take me past 'lunch' at the half way point at Rifugio Walter Bonatti to Rifugio Bertone, and then on to Courmayeur and the last climb (or would it be a chairlift?) to my accommodation.

At the end of the Val Ferret route, just before starting the descent to Courmayeur with Monte Bianco de Courmayeur above

As I approached the Rifugio Bertone and the start of the descent (from its patio) everything became very dry. The cloud had long since gone but much of the trail was a little moist, but at Bertone it became obvious that it was dryer and dustier by far at this point. After a little light refreshment here I started the descent, looking forward to hitting Courmayeur in good time.

My plans had changed after a conversation with my Wife during the planning stage. My initial plan was to stop here, and to have a really big day 4, but I took another look at this idea, and consequently decided to descent in the afternoon and climb to the top of the valley ahead in order to drop the climbing and distance on day 4 to less superhuman proportions.

Here I was promptly and firmly told that the chairlift was not open, and that I should abandon my plans to go high this afternoon, and to follow the valley round to the next Rifugio (which I later discovered was full). I thanked the nice lady in the tourist information, and promptly ignored her and headed across the river to start the climb up to Col Checruit.

It's worth pointing out at this stage that my cheese addled innerds and the high heat now in the valley were conspiring together to try to finish me off. I was slowly losing power, and beginning to feel quite rough as I climbed up through the steep woodland in the valley below the Hostel.

This was a 700m climb in high afternoon windless heat, and it was really getting hard; the hardest it got in fact on the whole trip. I was carrying a lot of water for the climb having refilled at the square, and was drinking constantly, but continued to feel really pretty weak, and was now concerned about heat exhaustion too with the lack of a cooling wind of any kind. I checked the map and found that there was a network of ski roads that roughly joined all the parts of the climb that the now brutal TMB path went through, and I now took to these paths.

On the way I delved into my bag for my emergency rations, and can confess (although there is no photo evidence) that if anyone had been half way up the climb on the ski track they would have found a rather feral 'biker' clad in his sweat soaked shorts, shirtless, eating cold 'boil in the bag' sticky toffee pudding with his fingers, covered in dust – some sight that would have been.

My morale was boosted on meeting a Canadian on his descent from the Col who exclaimed with expletives how much better this ridiculously steep track was than the main TMB path only yards away now in the woods. A sachet of dialorite later, the remains of what ammounted to over 5 litres of water (that day) and some head down and keep plodding action for about a year and a half finally saw me to the first refuge, and then rapidly topping out on the col to the flag adorned sight of my Rifugio (Rifugio Maison Viele) for the night – such a relief.

The rejuvinating qualities of copious amonts of fine Italian mountain food (containing very little cheese) had worked wonders. I woke to a beautiful sunrise through our window, had a leisurely breakfast (the usual bread, coffee, jam), packed, collected my almost dry riding kit (I washed it last night as it was absolutely minging) and headed out onto what the guidebook described as “a beautiful balcony route”.

It didn't lie, but it's worth noting that all the guides I could find, and the Cicerone one I based my trip on are all for walkers. Descriptions for walkers give very little away for bikers. That steepness where you have to step off and push is not delineated in the guides, neither are short sharp climbs, or boulder fields crossing the trail. This trail initially was pretty typical of this in that coming straight after breakfast I was forced to push a good section of the first mile or so just to break my legs in.

Looking back toward Col Checruit (you can just see the Rifugio) along the balcon with the spectacular Mont Blanc Massif alongside

Once riding however, I soon made distance on a lovely singletrack path, but here the main feature was the view over the valley below (the one the lady from the information desk had tried to send me up) over at the amazing jagged rock peaks of the Italian side of the Mont Blanc range. It was absolutely stunning from this vantage point, and a lovely way to start the day swooshing through alpine meadows with this as a backdrop.

The first half of the ride went much faster than I'd expected, the second a little slower, but eventually I zig-zagged up to the final point on this path before the descent. I stripped off my first (now shredded) pair of socks for the descent, had a wee feed, and then headed down onto what was a continuously rideable trail all the way down into the Valley through fields, alpine pasture, along cascading burns and eventually down bush lined zig zags. On this descent I probably met about half of the total number of walkers I met on the whole route. Clearly the full Hostel the lady in Courmayeur had wanted me to ride to had ejected everyone at the same time, and they were all over the path. This is why the TMB suggests that you ride in the opposite direction to the Walkers; so that they see you as you approach, and why there are seasonal restrictions when the walker numbers are high.

A short break in the wind then off into France down wide gravelly beaded tracks with only a few walkers now. The trail narrowed after a while, but made a beautifully contoured descent across the left wall of the corrie ahead as it narrowed. Eventually a set of initially narrow and then broader zig zags made their way down to the pastures at the head of the valley and down to the converted cattle farm of Les Motettes. This Refuge is accessible by car, and was very popular, although strangely segregated with day trippers sitting at one side and travellers on the other, or laying outside. Food here was awesome, plentiful, and possibly the reason why the rest of the day went so well.

The trail here as marked went down the valley initially by high speed gravel track, and then on to road, and I decided to keep to this, although clearly there was a path on the other side of the valley, but for some reason it seemed to make a significant climb before descending again.

It was a shame to lose so much height by road, but fantastic to arrive at the Nova Hut in the village at the bottom of the valley so fresh and so early, ready for the climb up to the Refuge de la Croix du Bonhomme. The week had mentally been divided into pre Croix du Bonhomme and Post Croix du Bonhomme. Ahead of me was around 1000m of climbing on trail that had again been described as “very steep in places” and by some walkers as “really difficult to get a bike up – almost scrambling”, so it was quite a large feature in my thinking about the route.

After a rest, a cooling off, a pot of tea, and a chocolate bar, I spent a few minutes talking to the Eastern European party I'd bumped into half of earlier, who had arrived before me of course, and then set out slowly, trying to keep the pace, and the stress as low as possible.

Before long, one of the Poles, Wojtek caught up with me. I discovered that the group were made up of a number of sub-groups from Slovakia and Romania as well as Wojtec and Isabella who I'd spoken to in Italy that morning. Wojtec had spent quite a lot of time studying in Scotland and we very quickly (as you do) established that we knew people in common – it really is a small world!

We decided to head up together as company would be nice on this long haul to the Col and my acommodation. Wojtek and his team had planned to go down the other side, but before long it became clear that they had become split up on the climb, and we didn't see them at all for the remainder of the climb to the Refuge.

What can you say about 1000m of ascent. I was so grateful to hook up with Wojtek so we could chat and take our minds off it. Bizarrely we tried to have a conversation with a shepherd at about 2/3 of the height but failed as he explained he didn't speak French very well either – he was Romanian. A weird day of connections.

The guidebook said that once we'd seen the Refuge it was still a good hour before we'd arrive, but this was causing some consternation as we still hadn't seen it in the first place and the clock was ticking. Fortunately we both had altimeters on our watches, and despite a difference in readings it was clear to us that we had just missed seeing it and would reach it in time for dinner. The last mile or so was pretty interesting, and did actually require some scrambling as we crossed deep ravines ready to transport meltwater from the high peaks beyond, but in my lovely sticky 5:10 shoes, these sections were simply entertaining.

Eventually, and in good time, and remarkably fresh, we reached the Refuge and I checked in. Despite no sign of the rest of his team Wojtek insisted on prepping to leave for the valley, and with no sign of them, and about 2 hours of daylight remaining, he eventually left to sort accommodation in the valley for everyone.

An hour later, the rest of the team arrived with tales of road detours, tarmac climbs, and mad ridgeline descents, having clearly created a new route to the Refuge, they also arrived very tired and despite being behind Wojtek, elected to stay the night.

There was a lot of carrying on this section of trail. While there were definitely sections to ride and a lovely finish to the Col Du Bonhomme and from it as well, there was a lot of steep rock to scramble up and down through. Nothing too hair raising, and again to be fair in awesome scenery which more than made up for the lack of riding on this initial section.

This blissful trail eventually brought us to the bottom of the valley and much closer to civilisation as (now split up again) I rode along footpaths, bank paths, through small hamlets, and eventually after crossing the main road through a small village to its upper farms to make the last climbs of the day.

Dropping down into the Nant Borrant Valley

On the map it looked like one climb, but this was definitely a series of climbs on old farm tracks leading from hamlet to hamlet as sometimes we went down, sometimes up, and, well, mostly up. Here I bumped into the team again who explained that Wojtek had headed off in the morning from this valley and was now several hours in-front, and at this point, after some jibes about riding my bike not pushing it I joined the team for the remainder of the wooded climb until we reached the upper alpine houses and the track changed to gravel track and led us sweating profusely and all pushing to the Col de Voza and 'civilisation' again.

Col de Voza is an odd place. It's the last Col to drop from into the Chamonix valley, but is on the rib of Mont Blanc that is most accessible, and therefore has the mountain railway on it too. The Col itself has a station on it, you have to cross the railway, and there is a Refuge there as well, so it's far from the remote mountain col you envisage as your last col. But here it was, and here we were, and here was Mont Blanc again!

Col De Voza

The team wanted to make a more interesting descent into the Chamonix valley than the estate track the TMB takes, so we had a squint at the map and identified a thin red line that looked like it might be a footpath. Unbeknown to us, as there was mountain biking in the area, it's likely that the TMB path was bike free here anyway, so this was probably a pretty good idea. Probably.

We descended following our noses, initially on a track across a meadow, and then onto some overgrown singletrack. An excited shout from in-front heralded some north shore over a large thistly bog, and I started to get quite excited – had we stumbled on a hidden gem? Well, no, not exactly, excitement soon changed to a different form of excitement as the rider in front discovered that the north shore was broken and falling apart in front and was roughly deposited into the bog. From here we knew that it wasn't a hidden gem, but more of a forgotten gem, and took to the odd bits of north shore with a bit more care, and more often than not, just hit the bogs instead.

The trail was steepening, but not alarmingly, and was severely washed out in places, but nothing I couldn't handle, but it did split us up as there was a variety of expereince and bikes in the party. Eventually though we hit a track and followed it to where it spat us out onto a road high above Les Houches. Now forced to stay on the road (as we were now officially signposted away from paths) we descended at full-tilt down to the valley floor where we parted. The team were going to refuel in Les Houches as they wanted to get to Trient to meet Wojtek and the rest of the group tonight, and I wanted to press on to Chamonix and my finish point.

I finished the day much as I spent the trip, riding alone through beautiful scenery. I rode on the Petit Balcon; the low level path up the valley, rather than the high level one I'd started on 4 days before. This was sparsely populated by a few walkers and cyclists travelling up and down the valley between Les Houches and Chamonix, and was a really lovely mellow way to finish the ride. The cloudless hot day had continued and I was once again rewarded by glimpses of Mont Blanc and the Massif, the Aiguilles and Glaciers as I climbed the treelined valley beside the thundering milky Are river which connects all the towns and villages in the valley.

Eventually I was spat out in Chamonix, and the last km or so of the route was through town, dodging blind French tourist drivers down the high street with all its bustling cafes and shops and eventually out to the small village my hostel was in, in a village swallowed by Chamonix some time ago. I went straight round the back of the hostel, locked my bike to the biggest wheelbarrow I could find, and was now focussed on my next adventure – getting to a bar and eating as much as I possibly could. I'd finished.

I wrote this article as I thought it might be inspiring for someone else, or useful information, or maybe even just an interesting read, but to be fair; mainly to capture the experience for myself. While doing it however, I did realise that I learned a few things that might be of interest, so what follows are some of the things I realised, learned and reflected on following the trip, that might prove useful to anyone heading out on this or a similar trip