How to avoid the crowds on the Tour du Mont Blanc

Maybe, try this gorgeous hike around the Beaufortain instead?

Mont Blanc from the Beaufortain trail

The Tour du Mont Blanc (the TMB) is popular and loved by many, but it can turn into a crowded trudge in August. The climbs up and down become so much more of a chore if you are in a slow-moving queue.

We had to cover a section of the route a short time ago and stayed a night at the Refuge de la Croix du Bonhomme, which is right by the path. The Refuge is a biggie, accommodating ninety in dorms, with more people camping close by and coming in to eat. It's just been closed for a refurb but the reason I'm mentioning the place is to ram home how many hikers are surging along the TMB at this point. We were told that in peak season the total can near a thousand a day. The Bonhomme had a very small number of toilets outside the building for all-comers. They got heavy use. Imagine.

The Crête des Gites, heading towards the Bonhomme refuge on the Beaufortain

Hats off to the Bonhomme staff. We had a comfortable night, after feasting on soup, pasta and brownies, then made an early start, heading out at 7am. But after an hour or so we found that we were competing with a growing multitude for space on the rocky way. Up in this normally remote landscape, where we were supposed to be "away from it all".

The TMB tribe was building and its members were all going the same way round the mountain, in the opposite direction to ours. Cameras were whirring, phones keeping Insta updated, poles waving around. All were polite and friendly, and stepped aside when they had to - but it was a crush.

Luckily for us, though, we were following a different route, the Tour du Beaufortain, which crosses the TMB in a few places but mostly takes you elsewhere. We were on quiet paths for much of our hike and in majestic scenery, including stupendous views of the Mont Blanc Massif and the Aravis.

Beaufort is famous for its cheese. Where the route dipped and took us through the Alpage, the high pastures, the mountainsides were dotted with small herds of golden-brown cows, their bells donging to provide a soft musical accompaniment to the journey.

Some of the paths we followed have been used for thousands of years to drive livestock up to those rich summer grazing grounds between 1,500m and 2,500m. One word for the process here is la remue; traditionally farmers would move their animals up in steps as the grass grew. On the Italian side it's known as l'inarpa. Cows and sheep were taken up in May or June and brought down in October.

These days farmers drag mobile milking trailers onto the mountain, by tractor, so they can do the milking in situ and the happy cows can carry on eating, without interruption, the best, fattest grass and the Alpine flowers that poke up in between.

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Happy Beaufort cows, Mont Blanc behind

Above the pastureland, the slopes were covered in myrtille and heather, marmots called shrilly from their hide-outs and bouquetin, or ibex, patrolled the rocky ridges.

Bouquetin at the Col des Fours

We did a five day hike, of which the first day was more of a reconnaissance, so we only completed half of the Beaufortain. We started at the pretty town of Arêches and finished by taking the Signal gondola down to Les Contamines and catching the bus to the train station at St Gervais.

I'd love to go back some day to finish the job.