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Last summer, we had the idea of doing the Tour du Mount Blanc. We started planning in earnest in September/October. The first decision we had to make was where to fly to. There were no direct flights from the Bay Area to Geneva, the closest major city to the start of the hike. So we decided we would fly somewhere else, stay there a few days, and then fly to Geneva. We also looked into train rides to Geneva as well. We looked into London, Paris, and other places, but eventually decided on Barcelona. The fact that Paris would be hosting the Olympics shortly after our trip also influenced our decision. If you want to read about the Barcelona part of our trip, see:
Barcelona Trip Report.
We looked into guided trips and luggage transfer, but since we're used to backpacking we decided
we would plan everything ourselves and eschew the luggage transfer. There are many companies that will
give you varying levels of support (including transferring your bags from refuge to refuge or hotel), a guide (or not), reserving all the refuges and hotels, etc. I will say that doing everything yourself is a lot of work! We started going online, reserving refuges and hotels. Some places we had to email or call. Some didn't speak
English. Most places wouldn't start taking reservations until October, and some wouldn't even take reservations until January. So we reserved as much as we could, then waited until January rolled around to reserve the rest.
We were not able to book Bonatti, or Hotel Chalet Val Ferret. Instead, we were able to book Rifugio Elena,
which meant our 5th day of hiking would involve 5000+ feet of climbing. We were not looking forward to that.
We decided on only one variant, the hike up to Lac Blanc, which looked really nice. However this did mean
over 7000 feet of descent on the last day, so we weren't looking forward to that either. For some days we
booked refuges but then found better alternatives later and cancelled the earlier reservations. It was all
very fluid for a while.
Pretty early on I joined a Facebook group for the Tour du Mont Blanc. It was pretty helpful, especially
starting in June when we started to read posts about current conditions. We learned that many people
thought microspikes were advised on some of the snow slopes, so we bought some of them. These are
metal attachments to hiking boots to give them more grip, kind of like mini-crampons. They don't actually
weigh much, and we felt much safer carrying them.
It is possible to camp in places on the TMB, but we decided we wouldn't bother. We would only stay in
refuges and hotels, so we didn't bring our tent. We also didn't have to bring food since the refuges provide
food, although we did bring a few energy bars just in case. Since we were only carrying about 60-70% of
the weight we would normally carry on a backpacking trip, we also used smaller packs than we usually do. No
bear canisters, no stove, etc. We did decide to bring a water filter just in case.
If you'd like to jump straight to some videos of the trip, see:
Slide Show Video (with over 200 photos) and
Clips video (composed of short video clips taken on the trail). Or, just read on!
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