The Tour du Mont Blanc (Part 1)
100 miles, 3 countries, and 11 days of trekking through the European Alps.
Although I’m still sore and exhausted, I’m beyond excited to share our latest bucket list adventure.
Beginning in the coveted adventure destination of the Chamonix Valley, the Tour du Mont Blanc circumnavigates the Mont Blanc massif, spanning 100 miles through France, Italy, and Switzerland. At some point unbeknownst to Jesse and me, the Tour du Mont Blanc slotted itself high up on our hiking bucket list. Maybe it was in 2014 when we first visited Chamonix and experienced the expansiveness of Mont Blanc on a sunny day. Maybe it was a few years later when editions of Outdoor Magazine began piling on our coffee table, calling us to the sharp, rugged peaks of the European Alps.
After completing the John Muir Trail in 2020, we knew the Tour du Mont Blanc would be next. The question was when. Mont Blanc is known for its temperamental weather and conditions that change at the drop of a hat. The weather might call for snow, but reality gives you a sunny day (if you’re lucky). And the window of time to complete the TMB; July – early September, was always a tricky time for Jesse to get time off of work. Things really needed to line up pretty perfectly for this to work out.
Oh yeah, and it’s in Europe, so we’d need some advance notice to book flights and deal with logistics and all of that, too…
Well, wouldn’t you know that 2023 would be the year? We started realizing our luck in May and began ramping up our planning.
For most people, the Tour du Mont Blanc is a hut-to-hut hike. This means most folks carry daypacks with some simple overnight necessities, but their meals and lodging are handled by pre-booked mountain huts known as refuges. At $55-$110/night (per person, including 2 meals), refuges can get costly, plus they can book up months in advance.
On the flip side, camping can be a bit tricky because traditional dispersed camping is illegal in Italy and quite stringent in Switzerland. While campgrounds exist across the entire tour, they are not always along the trail and can require catching a bus to get to.
With our last-minute timing and our will to traverse this trail, we decided to camp the whole way. Who knows, maybe there would be some cancellations at a refuge and we could live in luxury for a night at an Italian mountain hut!
To be honest, the logistics of this trail are an entire story in their own right. Logistics were always what you’d converse with fellow hikers about; trading stories about different towns, weather, and what food was good where. A small-town supermarket might close at 12pm on a Sunday or take a siesta for 2hrs midday. While it is one of those unusual hiking experiences where you do have access to plenty of cell service throughout the trek, the abundance of information online favors hut-to-hut hikers leaving backpackers to kind of wing it a little bit. But I suppose that’s typically how backpacking goes after all!
At the start of the hike, our packs weighed 30lbs (me) and 32lbs (Jesse), which included x2 1-liter bottles of water each. We brought calorie-dense energy bars for each day from home along with some small snacks like trail mix, fruit leathers, etc.
I planned for us to take 3 different variants along the TMB. Variants are alternate routes that are typically more challenging than the main route but can offer exceptional views. The catch is that variants are only advised in good weather. And the catch on top of that is that the weather is extremely unpredictable. In fact, while on the trail one day, multiple weather sources told us it was raining. It was in fact, not raining at all. So sometimes your eyeballs were a better source for the weather!
On day 1, we started the hike in the middle of a heat wave with our first variant; Bellevue. We took a cable car from Les Houches, France (the official starting point of the TMB) up nearly 6,000ft above the Chamonix Valley to the Bellevue Plateau where we began climbing toward our first mountain pass: Col de Tricot.
Despite the waterfalls of sweat rolling down our bodies, the route to Col de Tricot was a fairly unassuming little taste of what lay ahead on the TMB; direct, steep ascents and killer views. The route down from Col de Tricot would be a serious wake-up call for the steep descents this entire trek is known for.
When we made it down to the initial valley below Col de Tricot, my legs were shaking uncontrollably. About 2hrs later, my knees began a revolt against my body. They had had it with this crazy form of exercise I was putting them through. And this was just the first day of it! The gorgeous scenery and constant bells from the grazing cows provided a partial distraction as I worked through various mental forms of encouragement to continue down the mountain.
Each day featured a new mountain pass for us to tackle. So on the morning of Day 2, we started our ascent to Col du Bonhomme. We had our first encounter with rain on the approach, but to our excitement, the rain cleared as we reached the top of the pass, giving us the perfect picnic opportunity for lunch.
Coming down from Col du Bonhomme, we watched a shepherd herding his sheep alongside two dogs. The shepherd, a man carrying a backpack who looked to be in his mid-twenties, would make a high-pitched trill, alerting hundreds of sheep to move into a different grassy area. It was a beautiful sight to watch, high up on the hillside.
As we approached the hamlet of Les Chapieux, I began to feel such sharp pain in my knee, that I contemplated forfeiting the trail. But we went through so much just to get to the TMB that I just couldn’t give up. I wanted to at least get to Courmayeur, the Italian city at the base of Mont Blanc, to see if picking up a knee brace might help. We had 2 more days until we would be in Courmayeur.
That night, we slept in a small campground in Les Chapieux. Campgrounds on the TMB were often small patches of grass where a dozen or so hikers would corral their tents and swap stories from the trail. As soon as we went to bed, I quickly awoke after seeing a jolt of bright white light through my eyelids, followed by a crackling boom of thunder just a few seconds later. The thunder shook the ground and pierced the sky as if ripping it open. I began counting the seconds between the flashes and booms, attempting to understand how far away we were from the lightning.
At some point, the lightning and thunder subsided, finally allowing us to fall asleep. The next morning, the storm was the talk of the campground as everyone shared the seconds they counted between the thunder and lightning.
Day 3 began with deceptively good weather, but we knew we were in for a few days of rain. Most folks from the campground decided to take a bus that would cut out 2hrs of hiking. In retrospect, this helped them get a jump on the approaching weather, but they missed out on a beautiful glacial valley that Jesse and I enjoyed. I even had the humorous experience of getting licked unexpectedly by a cow!
Two hours into our day, we stopped at a refuge to pick up a bagged lunch and asked if they had an updated weather forecast. We knew the heat wave was ending and rain was imminent, we just weren’t sure when. Their internet was spotty and it was taking them too much time to get the forecast, so we decided to push on and deal with the rain whenever it decided to arrive.
At this point, we began the real ascent to our pass for the day: Col de Seigne. Col de Seigne would take us out of France and into Italy.
As we zig-zagged up toward the pass, the cool rain rolled in. It felt great on our skin after the heat wave from the previous two days. We hiked in our rain jackets and decided to forego rain pants until we could have lunch at the top of the pass.
When we arrived at Col de Seigne, the rain became much harder. The clouds were rolling in and the wind was kicking up. A sign at the top of the pass said there was a shelter about 20 minutes away, so we decided to book it straight there to have our lunch.
The trail was quickly becoming steep, muddy, and slippery as the rain started pouring sideways. We reached the shelter, running up to it and yanking on the doors, but they didn’t budge. The hours on the door showed they should be open, but in typical mountain fashion, things are open when they’re open and closed when they’re closed. We were starving, drenched, and quickly becoming quite cold as temperatures began to drop.
The next place we would be able to seek cover would be an Italian refuge; Refugio Elisabetta. A sign near the shelter said we were 25 minutes away. I have no idea how long it actually took (surely it was much longer than 25 minutes), but those were the longest 25 minutes of my life. We barrelled down the mountain as fast (and safely) as we could, sopping wet, starving, and literally looking for refuge from the rain. The wind continued to kick up, causing the temperatures to drop. When we finally caught sight of Refugio Elisabetta, it was like adding insult to injury. The refuge sat high up on a hill looming over us, flanked by glaciers and waterfalls. Now we would have to climb this crazy steep hill for some shelter.
So we did. Up, up, and up we went with every last ounce of energy we had in the pouring rain. When we made it inside to the boot room, we stood there shivering uncontrollably, wet to the bone. We dropped our stuff, went into the dining room, and ordered some hot beverages. My fingers were blue, my lips were blue, and I was doing everything I could to absorb the heat from my tea. We agreed to inquire if Elisabetta had any space for us to stay the night. Although it was only 3pm, it would be a few hours continuing in the rain to our campsite in wet clothes that would surely give us hypothermia. We could adjust our itinerary accordingly. To our luck, they had availability, so we made the executive decision to stay the night. We stripped our wet clothes, took our 30-second shower, and changed into dry lounge clothes. After about an hour or two, my body temp returned to normal and I couldn’t have been more grateful for shelter.
As crazy as experiences like this are, they teach you so much about yourself and the human species. It’s incredible to experience the different ways our body innately protects us, blinding our mind to pain or suffering and using adrenaline to help us through. The pain in my knee moved to the back of my mind as my body focused on finding shelter in the rain. And then there are things we learn in experiences like this that make us better backpackers. You can bet we wore our rain pants on any day that called for rain from that day on!
Experiencing a refuge was also a classic part of the trail that we thought we’d miss out on. Thanks to the storm, we got to see what these mountain huts were all about. Refugio Elisabetta can house up to 80 people per night. They serve you dinner and breakfast in a common area where you get to meet other hikers of all ages.
Our bed was a co-ed, 30-person, 3-story bunkbed. Each person got a sleeping bag’s width of a spot on the bed to rest. It’s no surprise I slept terribly, with a chorus of snorers waking me up all night. But I was still incredibly grateful for the shelter given the circumstances!
Part 2 of the Tour du Mont Blanc coming soon…