The Euro Journey Coach Workforce just lately accomplished the Tour du Mont Blanc. It was a really wonderful expertise. The hike was a problem, each bodily and mentally, with unimaginable rewards together with spectacular views, improbable camaraderie, and the sensation of accomplishment if you’ve achieved a objective you’ve been planning for months and months.
We’ll be posting new blogs on the Tour du Mont Blanc, however it’s value reposting this one, initially written in September 2019, only a few months earlier than we ever heard of coronavirus. The hike described right here was the inspiration for us to finish the tour all collectively. It’s one thing we talked about throughout lockdowns attributable to the pandemic, and dreamed about earlier than we might journey freely once more.
The important thing to creating this journey profitable is nice planning. Plan forward, guide your refuges early within the fall and early within the spring for a tour the next summer season. Additionally, pack gentle, carry blister bandaids and get your digicam able to take wonderful photos and create reminiscences that can stick with you the remainder of your life.
We hope you take pleasure in this reposting of Chelsea’s weblog from her first time on this space.
4 days on the tour du mont blanc
My husband Sam and I reside in Bristol, UK, and we sometimes select our trip locations primarily based on flight worth and timing. After we had been looking out Skyscanner just lately for a spot to go over the August financial institution vacation, a cheap flight to Geneva popped up that left on a Friday morning and returned on a Tuesday evening. We knew it was meant to be! Sam solely had to make use of two days of trip and we obtained practically 5 full days of journey time. We knew we didn’t need to spend the entire time in Geneva – it’s a ravishing metropolis however it may be costly and there’s not all that a lot we needed to see within the metropolis itself – so we began brainstorming choices close by. We mentioned renting a automobile and testing the Jura wine area, and exploring the Vanoise Glaciers (each issues that I’d nonetheless actually love to do), earlier than finally deciding on doing a portion of the Tour du Mont Blanc (TMB). The TMB is a 170 kilometer mountaineering route that passes via Switzerland, Italy and France, encircling the Mont Blanc massif. The complete tour sometimes takes round 7-10 days to finish. Since we had been restricted on time (we hiked for 3 and a half days, and spent our remaining day in Geneva) we had been solely in a position to full about 1/3 of the route (plus a little bit detour), from Les Houches to Courmeyeur. It was an unimaginable option to spend our lengthy weekend!
Practicalities
We used Cicerone’s The Tour of Mont Blanc Full Two-Manner Trekking Information by Kev Reynolds each upfront of our journey to assist plan our schedule and through our time on the path. It was completely invaluable and I’d advocate it to anybody within the TMB. We stayed at mountain “refuges” whereas we had been on the path, that are lodges dotted across the TMB which offer beds (most have dorms and personal rooms accessible), water, and meals. We packed the whole lot we would have liked into two mountaineering backpacks and carried them with us on the path. There are corporations that can present baggage transfers, however it does restrict the place you may keep, because the lodging should be accessible by automobile. If doable, I’d extremely advocate carrying your individual pack – pack gentle and do sink laundry if obligatory. You might at all times retailer bigger baggage in Geneva if you happen to’re incorporating the TMB into an extended European journey.
Day 1
Les Houches to Refuge du Fioux
