8/19/14 - Tour du Mont Blanc - Day 4

If you missed day 3 click here:  Tour du Mont Blanc - Day 3


After about 125 miles of riding over the last three days I was really ready for an easy day on the bikes.  Luckily, our fourth day looked like it was going to be just that.  We had only two passes to climb and a total vertical on the day of only about 1000m (3280 ft).  Compared to the epic day 3, it was going to be a cake walk!  Of course, after three days of perfect weather, we woke up to a downpour!  Hoping it would quit soon and we wouldn't have to ride in the rain, we killed time staring at the map in the refuge.  Luckily, especially this summer, the rain totally quit at about 10:00 and didn't start up again for the rest of the day.  We left Le Gorge du Notre Dame and headed towards Les Contamines Montjoie.  We veered right at the town of Le Cugnon to meet up with a trail marked on our map as T.P.M.B.  The guide's blog that we were following for most of the journey simply said that they climb from Contamines to the Chalets de Miage refuge to start off the day.  I can't say what route the guide normally takes, but I am 100% positive it is not the route that we took!  We ended up essentially bushwhacking our way through the woods trying to find the T.P.M.B trail.  Bucky kept making comments along the lines of, "Hey, did you know they filmed Gorillas in the Mist here?"  And a little later, "Hey, did you know they filmed Jurassic Park here?"  Even if we weren't exactly on the right route, it was worthwhile to see so much Hollywood history in one small area of France!  

The pretty Chalet du Truc

We did, eventually, find the T.P.M.B trail after about an hour of hiking and made good time to the Chalets de Miage.  The Miage valley was absolutely gorgeous.  If you are coming to the French Alps just to sightsee, you need to go here.  We grabbed a quick lunch (and no pictures) and continued down a really technical singletrack to the town of Bionnassay.  I managed to endo once again, but at least I didn't land on my head and fractured helmet!  From Bionnassay we had one last climb, but boy was it a DOOZY!  I was in granny gear for almost the whole thing, and even that wasn't enough.  I probably walked about 25% of the thing.  Bucky, however, managed to ride all they way up to the Col de Voza.  From here it was a long descent to Les Houches, then a very gradual climb on paved roads just a few miles back to Chamonix, hot showers, and our own beds!  Les Houches has

Finally found the T.P.M.B!

spent the last few years developing their downhill MTB trails so I was excited to give them a whirl.  While we did manage to ride a short section of one of them (and man was it cool.  There was a Northshore bridge feature that was probably about 8" wide at the narrowest spanning a gully about 15 ft deep and then ended in some huge banked wooden "S" turns, but I digress) the next section of the trail was closed, and all the others below that!  Unfortunately we had to descend the majority on the road, but I will come back to try out some more of those Northshore features at a later date!  We arrived back in Chamonix after six hours, our easy day being a bit more difficult than expected.  The whole journey was about 160 miles, with about 27,000 feet of elevation gain, and about 29 hours of total ride time!  With all of that riding, especially on hard tails, I think it was pretty miraculous that we only had two broken bike parts, two flat tires, and one broken helmet!  Bucky and I agree that in order to ride the Tour du Mont Blanc, you have to go into it expecting an epic adventure, and not epic mountain biking.  There were a few fun climbs, and a few really fun descents, but the majority of the time you are on roads, either paved or dirt, and there is a substantial amount of hiking involved.  With the right attitude, however, you can have a grand ol' time; just like we did!

Check out the video of the journey here:  Tour du Mont Blanc - Youtube