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Tour du Mont Blanc

A mountain bike tour of Mont Blanc written by Gareth Jefferies of endlessride.com who did the route with some fellow guides in September 2008.
6100m of ascent, 138km over 3.5 days, our version of the TMB by MTB.

Fellow rider Sian Hughes on the Italian side of Mont Blanc with the Aiguille Noire de Peuterey in the background.

The endlessride staff had been talking about the Tour du Mt Blanc all summer. The time was set for “sometime from the middle of September”. The main decider would be the weather. None of us were willing to set out on this trip without a good forecast!

We did a little research on the route. The people we know who had done it were split on direction ‘clockwise or anti-clockwise’. We have a friend who runs this tour for Ride the Alps, Jamie Carr, he convinced us to go ‘anti’, against the flow for most parties. He made a good argument though. It went along the lines of:

• 1. More rideable
• 2. Less road
• 3. You get to do the ‘Bovine’ section which would be avoided otherwise.
• 4. What’s the point going clockwise just so you can use the lifts at Le Tour? - They’’ll be closed in September anyway.
• 5. What does it matter??

I liked point 5, on a multi-day circular trip the direction augments should equal out, shouldn’t they?
Sian and Carl spotted a clear spell and gathered the troops with 24 hours notice. The team dropped from 6 to 4. Xaver had to travel from Munich, a good effort. He wasn’t at all sure about the chosen direction. We had to gang up on him.

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Day 1. Ascent, 1300m Distance, 11km

A half day really. I’m not good at getting ready the day before so had timetabled a 2pm start from Les Contamines. A cold front had just swept through the Alps leaving snow down to about 2200m. It was going to be cold!
We set off from the car park (1200m) at Notre Dame de la Gorge and managed to ride the flat 500m until the path started upwards. We were reduced to pushing within 2 minutes of starting! With a combination of pushing and riding, we arrived at the Refuge du Col Croix du Bonhomme (2433m) at about 5.30pm. I had rung ahead to check the hut was open. It was.

Day 2. Ascent, 1700m Distance, 36km

This morning was cold with occasional mist. We could see the day would end up perfect but to start with it was well below freezing. We were not ready for what was obviously a fairly difficult descent until it had thawed somewhat.

Below: Refuge du Col Croix du Bonhomme
We waited until 10am, at least the ground had defrosted. We rode the tricky single track down to Les Chapieux. We had an early lunch at the Refuge de la Nova, more of a guest house really and it's open most of the year.
From here it was a 900m grunt up to the Col de la Seigne (2516m), by this time the weather was pretty much perfect. We descended down to the Val Veni, and before we got to Courmayeur we made an excursion (another 500m of climbing) up onto the South side of the valley. As we started so late in the day and hadn’t eaten much this was fairly painful. Well worth it though for the riding and the views. By the time we dropped into the valley the sun had long disappeared and it was quite chill again. We had talked to a local about the best way to get to the Hotel. It involved a clever dirt road near the exit to the Mont Blanc tunnel and saved us a fair amount of faff.

Day 3. Ascent, 1400m Distance, 47km

Right: Mont Blanc de Courmayeur (4308m), the Italian summit of Mt Blanc.
We set off in better time this morning. The gentle ride up the Italian Val Ferret was another freezing affair, a great looking spot though, much more American than European. We reached the end of the tarmac in about an hour and a half. Here we could not pass up the opportunity for a coffee and cake. We had come to the conclusion that the only places open at this time of year would have tarmac leading to them (we were not wrong), but this left some quite large distances between refreshments. The slog over the Col du Grand Ferret was very slippery that day. The descent was on the sunny side so had dried up. The track was a real highlight of the trip.
Towards the bottom we came to a farm. We believe a left turn here would have led to more single track but with lunch in La Fouly calling we gave it a miss. The rest of the ride down was world class. We rode right to the bottom of the valley and spent a sneaky night at a friend’s house. The purists would have climbed up to Champex Lac.

Day 4. Ascent, 1700m Distance, 44km

Below: Gareth arriving at the summit of the Col de la Seigne (2516m)
After a lift up to Champex Lac (that saved 800m of tarmac climbing) we had our second coffee of the morning and still managed to get going before 9.30am. We had feared this next section for a while. It had been described as a 1hr ‘carry’, 500m of ascent. We had actually avoided much carrying up until today and Sian especially didn’t fancy her chances on this. None of us ride particularly light weight bikes! As it turns out it was very hard work. We know one thing though, you’ll not be riding this climb up or down, it would be a carry down too. Once we’d dealt with the carry it was all good single track from then until the col de la Forclaz. Well worth the effort. We had lunch here - BIG MISTAKE, it’s a tourist trap, overpriced and unfriendly. Next time we’ll head down to Trient for better value.
We knew the riding from here on. We climbed up to the reservoir above Vallorcine (another 500m) and descended the new Vallorcine downhill
course. We sneaked a traverse in to Le Buet and then headed to the MBC in Chamonix - the fastest off-road route we know. The weather was threatening to break.

Conclusions

• 1. Is ‘anti’ the best way around - who knows? We’ll do it clockwise next time just to see.
• 2. We’d definitely wait for good weather, the break in the weather we went for worked out perfectly.
• 3. Would we advise going on an organised trip? Definitely, just imagine what you’d do if you had an injury, a mechanical failure or an illness?
  It is feasible to self-guide this route but I would recommend going with a small experienced company such as Jamie Carr at Ride the Alps
• 4. Would we do it again? Like a shot - either way round.

© Text by Gareth Jefferies, 2008

Gareth Jefferies left the Police 10 years ago and has worked as a mountain bike and snowshoe guide ever since. He is based with his wife and 3 children near Morzine. Gareth recently became the first British Mountain Bike Guide to become qualified in France and is a member of both BAIML (British Association of International Mountain Leaders) and SNAM (Syndicat National des Accompagnateurs en Montagne). Details about Gareth's mountain biking holidays can be found at endlessride.com