I liken completing the Tour du Mont Blanc (TMB hereafter) to drinking 4-5* Maß (litres) of beer at the Oktoberfest a couple of years ago: Fun at the time and nice to find out that I can still do it, but not something that I’d repeat any time soon.
*It gets a bit hazy after beer No. 3 - I know there was at least one more, in my mind it was two.
The idea to undertake the 11-day grueling Tour du Mont Blanc was born when our son Joshua tabled the idea that he might do it with a friend last year. Although his trek didn't happen, we started looking into it more closely. Doing the maths on all our fingers and toes, we realised that 2024 was our 25-year anniversary on summiting on the top of Mont Blanc and so an idea was born.
Thinking that the weather would be more stable and less hot at the beginning of September than at the height of summer, we booked our tour for the first two weeks of the month hoping that we'd have mostly sunny days around 20°C - optimal hiking weather. Unfortunately that didn't turn out being the case, though this also lead to some photo opportunities that we might otherwise not have had. We certainly hadn't reckoned with snow though (foreshadowing for the last two days).
Apart from the aforementioned trip to climb Mont Blanc, Sharon and I have many fond memories of Chamonix, and particularly Argentière and the campsite at Les Chosalets both before and after kids and so it was a delight to drive once more through the villages down from Col Forclaz, seeing how little the valley had changed over the years.
After trying to book the tour ourselves (well, after Sharon tried using the dedicated TMB refuge portal) and coming up blank at a couple of critical places, we bit the bullet and resorted to one of the companies that book the whole trip for you. We ended up going with https://huttohuthikingeurope.com/, who did a solid job and we'll be booking with them in the future. They provide a very comprehensive level of information for the whole hike as well as each leg of the journey. What really set them apart for us though was the email alert towards the end of the tour alerting us to the incoming snow and asking whether we wanted them to rebook accommodation in the valley, an offer which we declined, but impressed me no end.
We arrived at our hotel in Les Houches in good time on the Monday afternoon allowing us to explore and work out where we needed to go the following morning.
The Outward Leg: Les Houches to Courmayeur
One of the big concerns we had was where to leave the car. There is a dedicated TMB car park, but we arrived on the Tuesday morning to see that the last two spaces had just been taken. So we decided to take a risk and park just outside the official parking and hope that the car would be there when we got back, a decision that would plague me with doubt over the next 11 days.
Finding the trail head we followed the well marked path to the top of Col de Voza, encouraged that we were keeping to the times indicated on the sign posts.
From the top of Col de Voza the trail drops down to the river coming out of the dwindling Bionassay glacier before heading over Col du Tricot and dropping down to Les Miage, the first refuge of the tour.
After a good night's sleep we needed to get down to the village of Les Contamines before the long ascent to Col du Bonhomme and the Refuge du la Croix du Bonhomme, which ended up being the shabbiest accommodation on the whole tour. Leaving Les Miages we crossed over a stone bridge. Although the weather wasn't the best, no self-respecting landscape photographer can pass up a stone bridge without checking underneath for trolls:
After Les Contamines the path follows the Bon Nant river past the church of Notre Dame de la Gorge and up along a picturesque gorge.
The weather turned overnight and despite a window of good weather after dinner, the next day - our longest - it rained from the get-go well into the Italian leg of the tour. It wasn't until just below our late lunch stop at Cabane du Combal that we were able to take off our waterproofs.
We actually almost didn't make it past the Cabane; whilst enjoying our repast the owner looked on us with pity, saying that she'd just received two cancellations for that evening. We were so tempted to cut the trek short and take her up on her offer, but decided that we should carry on to Monte Bianco and in the end we were so glad that we did. For the first time on the tour we had a room to ourselves and the views of the back of Mont Blanc from the balcony were great.
Although we were keeping (more or less) to the times indicated on the signposts for most of the legs of the journey, we were constantly being overtaken on the trail, at least for the first half of the tour. Sharon and I are very experienced day-hikers and we know our pace and how to set it for a long hike, but every day we were being left in the dust, most notably by a bunch of septuagenarian Coloradans who, it turned out, had booked through the same company as we had and would be sharing the same refuges as us every single night. Even knowing that they arrived acclimatised, living at over 1,600 m didn't really assuage my ego much. Day three was a little different though as we encountered our first led tour climbing up to Col de la Seigne from Refuge des Mottets. They stormed past us to start with as we gently plodded up the hill in the steady rain. Between Mottets and the Col we must have passed them 4 or 5 times as their leader stopped them for breaks. In my opinion this is poor mountain leadership for a couple of reasons; the group was separating each time like a stretched concertina and it was particularly cold and unpleasant on the Col - wet and windy. Stopping under these conditions can easily lead to members of the group cooling down unnecessarily. Slow and steady wins the race.
We knew that days two and three were going to be our greatest challenge on the TMB; two 10-h days including a 31 km trek with nearly 2,000 m descent on day three (almost 20 miles and over 6,500' down). Although we managed both days, I was also concerned about our ability to regenerate overnight. We were practically immobile that night and I cursed every time I had to go down a floor to the toilet during the night (altitude diuresis is a thing!).
The Back Leg: Courmayeur to Champex du Lac
The following morning Sharon insisted that instead of dropping down to Courmayeur along the road, we should hike up over Maison Vielle to rejoin the TMB proper and then hike out via Dolonne. One of the things that has always fascinated me about continental Europe is how fluid the language borders are, and all the place names on this stretch are decidedly French.
This ended up being the right choice, despite the 45 min reascent to the ridge. The views in the tiny hamlet of Checrouit in the middle of the ski slopes were more than reward enough.
In Courmayeur we managed to find a laundromat, ice cream parlour and pizzeria, so we tanked up on ice cream whilst we waited for the sole functioning machine to become free and then headed to the pizzeria for lunch whilst we did our first load of washing on the tour. I should have known not to order wine - on asking the waiter which wines they had to accompany lunch, I was told "red or white". Like a fool I ordered a half bottle of red gut-rot, but at least it came with glasses, unlike the plastic disposable beakers that came with the bottle of water.
The hike up to Rifugio Bertone was a long one through thick forest, but it was ultimately worth it for the grand views as we emerged on the high mountain terrace that we would end up traversing the whole of the next day. One of the highlights of the tour was seeing two majestic birds on the peak above Bertone being mobbed by crows. At first we thought they were eagles, but closer inspection through a borrowed pair of binoculars revealed that it was actually a pair of bearded vultures, the largest bird to inhabit the Alps since its re-introduction years before.
Although day four hadn't been as grueling as #2 and #3, I was still concerned about how much we were recovering each night. Fortunately, the next day was a gentle traverse up the Ferret valley to Rifugio Elena. Although we started in the mist, this slowly dissipated, granting us glimpses of the Grandes Jorasses, though Monto Bianco proved more elusive.
A couple of stream crossings caused some delays due to the travel tripod that I'd elected to bring with me coming into service. Although I can normally achieve 1/4" exposures with the Olympus without resorting to a tripod due to the fantastic in-camera stabilisation, there were some points where I wanted the extra security, plus I wanted to avoid my shadow being in the foreground as much as possible. There were three other reasons why I decided to take the OM-1 rather than my new favourite toy the Nikon Z7 II; (i) I know the Olympus like the back of my hand and can operate it more or less blind, (ii) the in-camera ND filter meant that I could leave my bulky ND filters behind, and (iii) the Olympus battery life is significantly better. As it turned out, reason (iii) wasn't all that critical, we were easily able to recharge all our devices each night with two exceptions; Refuge Croix du Bonhomme and Refuge Flégère. There were charging points at both refuges, but they were limited and our need was minimal given that we also had a number of power banks with us for exactly this purpose.
Arriving at Rifugio Elena, the weather started to close in again, a condition that would persist more or less for the rest of the tour with a few notable exceptions.
Day 6 - our halfway point - saw us crossing Grand Col Ferret into Switzerland before dropping down into the delightful village of La Fouly. Apart from the landscape (and weather) being very reminiscent of the Scottish Highlands at this point, the trail was relatively unremarkable. Whether it would have been more impressive with greater visibility I don't know. Maybe it was just the mid-tour blues, but at least we were finally able to recuperate fully overnight due to shorter days.
Our early arrival in La Fouly meant that we had the afternoon to ourselves and it finally had stopped raining. Sadly they had just served their last Rösti at the bar, leaving us with toasted ham and cheese sandwiches. Walking through the fields we happened upon a lovely Belgian couple who had two large white dogs on leads. Chatting to them we found out that these were the same breed as the local sheep dogs that we had been seeing all round the tour. They were actually Pyrenees mountain dogs, a breed that was larger in my memory than the dogs before us now. Although the sheep dogs on the trail were notoriously protective of their herds, these two couldn't get enough neck scratches.
La Fouly to Champex du Lac has been described by some as the most boring leg of the tour, but we (and others) found that the hike through misty Swiss forests to be a welcome change after several days higher up in the mountains. It's funny how some days you hardly saw a soul, but on others, such as the stretch from La Fouly to Champex, the trail seemed to be an unending line of backpack-laden hikers almost as far as the eye could see.
The Return Leg: Champex du Lac to Les Houches
When you get to day 8 and all's going well, you know you're on the home stretch, the final straight, particularly as we were now dropping into the valley that we'd driven through 9 days ago on our way to Chamonix. First off we had to climb up to Refuge Bovine, where we'd been promised 'the best pastries of the tour', only to find out that it was closed for the season. This didn't deter the 50 or so TMBers from using their tables for their picnic lunches. The clouds were parting and closing on Martigny below us before we dropped down to Col Forclaz and then Trient to possibly the most unique refuge of the whole tour.
Refuge Le Peuty is run by mountaineers and is essentially a cute barn loft for sleeping and a huge yurt in the garden as a dining room. They also had a washing machine, meaning that we were able to clean all of our smalls for the last few days, a real Godsend at this point of the tour.
Due to Sharon's eye-sight we had elected not to go via the more adventurous Fenêtre d'Arpette on this leg, the boulder field at the col would have been very challenging. This ended up being the correct decision as our Coloradan friends didn't arrive at the refuge until at least 6 pm.
The food was once again excellent, the ambiance enhanced by the character of the yurt.
The next morning saw us climbing up to Col de Balme to re-enter France and finally catch a glimpse of Mont Blanc, albeit in less than perfect conditions with a very grey sky. We then walked over L' Aiguillettes des Possettes before descending in the mist to our penultimate refuge in Montroc. As always, our mountain navigation was on top form, but navigating our way through the streets and paths in the valley turned out to be more challenging.
We'd been looking forward to the stretch up to Flégère all tour with the infamous ladders. Finally we were keeping up with the Coloradans as we hit the iron rungs high up above Argentière. About a dozen sections of ladder take you through to the top of a steep band of sheet rock, well manageable to anyone with a reasonable head for heights.
Ever hopeful for a gap in the weather, we decided to take the detour to Lac Blanc to see whether we could capture the classic view of Mont Blanc reflected in the still waters. Instead we ended up with a close encounter with several ibex relaxing in the now gently falling snow. Not even a lunch break in the refuge granted us any views and so we descended to our last stop of the tour, Refuge Flégère, one of the oldest huts in the alps, dating back to 1827. As dinner time approached (one of the most unexpectedly good meals of the tour), the clouds teased us with a dance of seven veils around the tops opposite, revealing Les Drus and the Aiguille Vert as well as the Aiguille du Midi, but never The King. We wouldn't see Him again for a couple more days.
The last day revealed fresh snow on the hillside but mercifully little to none on the path to Pranplaz. The official TMB goes up from here over the top of Brévent, but having been here before and given the conditions we decided instead to cut our losses and drop down to the Petit Balcon and walk back to Les Houches in the valley rather than down the ridge. Arriving at Les Gaillands, the sign indicating we still had 80 min to go back to Les Houches had to be the most depressing one of the whole tour, even though it only took us an hour from here to arrive at our starting point, completing the round trip after 11 days.
The Extra Leg: Two days in Chamonix and Argentière
The relief at finding the car where we parked it after so long on the trail sans wheel clamp or ticket cannot be expressed in words. Gratefully we drove back into Les Houches to grab a cup of tea and pastry at the lovely patisserie just below the church.
After driving back through Chamonix, we checked in to our Les Grands Montets Spa Hotel in Argentière, the one luxury concession that we made on the tour. Having checked in, we were surprised to find that several people were using the hotel as a part of the TMB before heading up to Flégère. Somehow that seemed like cheating; simple refuges were part of the experience for us.
Saturday morning saw us checking out the weekly market at Place du Mont Blanc in Chamonix, buying some souvenirs and some local cheese and nougat. Mont Blanc was visible again, but with the same grey skies as we'd experienced at Col de Balme two (or was it three?) days prior.
The afternoon saw us taking a trip down memory lane - literally - walking round old haunts in Argentière before retreating to the spa. A top-notch meal at Le Dahu seemed the perfect way to end a most excellent two weeks, pre-celebrating Sharon's birthday the next day.
The end? Well not quite. The following morning we could see the Aiguille du Midi cheekily pointing its head out above the valley mists and so before driving home we drove back down into Chamonix and took the first cable car up to the top of Le Brévent, for old time's sake:
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