The Tour du Mont Blanc is one of the most epic treks in the world! This post is about our lessons learned and what we wish we knew before tackling it.
For more of a day-by-day itinerary, full of stats and trail photos, go to my Instagram TMB highlights. I also have a Guide on Instagram with all my daily posts from the trail.
Topics in this Post
What is the Tour du Mont Blanc?
Known as the TMB, the Tour du Mont Blanc is a strenuous 100+ mile hike around the Mont Blanc Massif. Hiking around this massif allows you to hike from France, to Italy, to Switzerland, and back to France! You can begin from anywhere on the trail, but the most popular starting points are Chamonix (France), Les Houches (the official starting line in France), and Courmayeur (Italy). We planned to complete the tour in 11 days, including 1 rest day in the middle. How does the saying go? Man plans and God laughs? lol Due to sickness, we had to stop on the 9th day (Stage 10). We were so close to the end, but sometimes it’s best to swallow your pride than to put yourself in danger. It only means that we have to go back and finish what we started!
The beauty about this trail is that you can make it as easy or difficult as you’d like. If multi-day hikes sound daunting, you could just do day hikes! Or you could hike a couple days, stay in mountain huts, and then take a few days off before reconvening on the trail again. It really all depends on how much time you have, what you want to accomplish and experience, and what you can physically handle! They even have private luggage services for those who want to hike with day packs, but arrive to the refuge at the end of the day with their luggage already there.
You can wild camp (its not the easiest since it’s illegal in Italy on this trail), stay in refuges or mountain huts, or descend down each day to stay in a hotel.
What Research Didn’t Tell Us
We did months of research for this trip and started preparing about a year in advance. Countless hours of reading blogs, watching videos, gathering gear, and reading guide books and maps (like this one)! Yet, there were some key elements of this trip that everyone left out of their content.
The elevation gain/loss is no joke
We were aware that the trek would be difficult, with intense elevation changes, but reading about it and doing it are very different things. The elevation map looks like a heartrate monitor! We also did not completely realize that every morning would have a steep elevation gain and every late afternoon, a steep elevation loss. Sometimes there would be two sets of those in 1 day! (I’m looking at you, Day #2). We assumed that because we were staying in refuges, our elevation gains/losses would have been less, but that was not the case.
For us, a day trip or a couple day trips with elevation changes like this were manageable. But we did not think that a week and a half of it would take a toll as much as it did! In preparation for it, we brought a small tube of icy hot, a knee brace, leukotape, and trekking poles (important).
In retrospect, we should have brought 4 knee braces between the two of us. Thankfully, my knees were surprisingly totally fine (shocker since I am always the one with knee problems on hikes). But my poor husband (who never has knee pain) finally experienced it for himself towards the end of the trek. He had to make due with 1 knee brace and the aid from his trekking poles, which were a life saver. He resembled the tin man, desperately needing oil, trudging down the steep descents!
Pain slows you down drastically and with our nightly accommodations waiting for us, we couldn’t be late. This limitation easily set us back hours on the trail. Months of good nutrition, supplementation (like Omega-3’s), and strength training couldn’t even help avoid it! For someone who is susceptible to hiking knee pain, I recommend the braces, trekking poles, proper stretching and rest, and cutting your daily miles shorter to preserve your joints.
If you’re late, you lose your bed!
This didn’t happen to us, thankfully, but we had a close call! This wouldn’t happen for a standard hotel, but for a refuge, it isn’t the case. Usually you have until 6pm to arrive at a refuge to be accounted for. If you are late, you might very well find that they gave away your booked room or bed to another hiker that showed up before you without a booking!
On day 2, we got a later start because our laundry wasn’t dry and we didn’t realize how long of a day we were going to have. There were TWO summits that day and at 6pm, we still had about 2 hours to go to get down to our refuge for the night. We didn’t have cell service to call the refuge to let them know we will be there a little late! Luckily, there was 1 more refuge before the descent that we stopped by to see if they had a phone we could use. We found out that making personal calls wasn’t allowed, but we seemed to convince them it was an emergency and it would only take a moment. We pulled up the number (we keep printed copies of reservations) and the amazing owners of Les Chambres du Soleil actually met us on the road! They saved us an hour of hiking, and brought us back to the refuge in time for dinner!
Having this close call right in the beginning of the trip, made us more aware of our pace moving forward. We also decided doing laundry was more of a burden that it was worth. Unless you hand dry clothes on a line outside, nothing will be dry in the morning in your room. We made due by hanging our clean, damp clothes on our packs for the day to dry out in the sun. It’s a Catch-22 because you can’t bring more than 2 pairs of anything (definitely only 1 pair of pants) in order to keep your pack weight down, but if you sweat and have sensitive skin like me, clean clothes are a priority.
Breakfast time will make or break you
This is such a big lessons learned topic. All refuges will provide you breakfast, and you should absolutely eat it! However, some refuges serve breakfast far too late in my opinion and take time away from the trail. The first day we hit the trail late because of 8:30am breakfast…that’s like hiker’s mid-morning! We found ourselves rushing to our next accommodation because we had too late of a start. This is where camping comes in handy because you are in charge of your own breakfast time. Refugio Bonatti did it right though, they started serving a pretty basic breakfast at 6am and we made sure that was when we were there. We were on the trail by 6:30am and it was a dream. The air was crisp as the sun was rising. It was paradise.
I would recommend knowing in advance what time breakfast is at the places you want to book and adjust your trail days accordingly. A later start could mean less hours hiking that day to make up for it. Another option would be to skip refuge breakfast all together and opt for your own prepared food to hit the trail early. We personally wanted to have breakfast at the refuge because its included in the rate and it took the responsibility off our hands to get food/coffee. The biggest tip for this option would be to make sure everything is packed up and ready to go before breakfast. The day I mentioned before, about our laundry not being dry, really slowed us down that morning and we could never catch up!
Bring sleep/chill pants
We knew the mountains were cooler at night, but everything we read told us to wear shorts to bed because the refuges were so warm. Clearly, that was during a warmer than usual summer. During our late afternoons and evenings on the Tour du Mont Blanc, we were so cold in shorts! In-between arriving at the refuge and dinner, we unpack, shower and change. If we are lucky, we can chill out a bit. And I wish I brought some extra pants to do that in because I didn’t want to put on my sweaty hiking pants again! Shorts were a bad call. I guess I would bring a pair, but also a pair of lightweight pants.
Bring sickness medication
Our trip was unfortunately cut short by 1 stage because of either a bacterial or parasitic stomach infection 🙁 We thought we would let it run its course without medication, but we should have packed some and used it ASAP. It would have saved us a week of illness most likely. Pepto Bismol is illegal in France (because of the heavy metal Bismuth), but packing some Imodium and Smecta (both used for diarrhea) will help immensely. Smecta adsorbs toxins, bacteria, and rotavirus, preventing their adherence to intestinal membranes.
We have no clue where or how we got sick, but a couple other hikers we were traveling with also had similar symptoms. It could very well have been from a refuge that all of us stayed at, but sadly, there is no way to know. I don’t think there is anything you can do to avoid getting sick, especially since this is such a communal experience.
I guess the best way to try and avoid getting sick would be to either camp and cook your own food, or descend everyday into town to stay in a hotel and eat at reliable restaurants. There are downsides to both, though. Camping requires a lot more planning and gear, and with that comes a lot more pack weight. Hiking down every night to a hotel also adds more time to your route and costs more.
Additionally, eating at a restaurant would add hours and costs, as well. There’s no way around it, the mountain huts are the best of both worlds. You don’t need to carry heavy camping gear, trek into town, but you’ll have a bed, and sometimes even a private room. And dinners at refuges are REALLY good, efficient on time as well. They want you to enjoy your meal (always 3 courses), but they understand you need to fuel up quick and get ready for the next day of adventure ahead.
Don’t trust the book(s) & signs on the Tour du Mont Blanc
This one is huge! We used Tour du Mont Blanc guide books to help us plan out our day because of the reported mileage and pace. This was a mistake lol It was a mistake because we found ourselves hiking much longer than what were in the books. So, what gives! Even the posted trail signs were misleading, where it would say 1 hour remaining and we would still be trekking 2 hours later. It became common place for us to mutter under our breaths, “Well, that sign was dead wrong.”
Unless you are confident about your pace in extremely mountainous regions, I would recommend adding 1-2 hours to any stats you read in a guide book or on a trail sign! My husband and I typically have a good pace, but the elevation gains and losses are what slowed us down. I am the slowest on ascents, whereas my husband is pretty quick. In turn, I’m pretty quick on descents, while my husband slows down a lot! Many times on the ascents, I will need to take a short break and I would tell him, “Keep going! I will catch up!” and he would respond, “No, I’m not leaving you!”
Also, we like to stop a lot to drink water, take photos, video, and just take it all in. We felt that many people didn’t really stop and turn around to witness the majestic views they just climbed because they needed to keep their heads down to get their miles in. I would rather have a slower pace to truly appreciate why I am here in the first place.
Don’t count on taxis or ski lifts
Hotels have shuttle services and so does the airport, but once you’re in Chamonix, you won’t find a taxi. Everyone has to either drive or depend on the bus system. The bus system was typically very punctual and useful for us. But once we were outside of Chamonix, it was increasingly difficult to get around. During Stage 9, after Col de Balme, we planned on taking the ski lift down the descent to get to our accommodation earlier. Well, the lift was closed, probably for maintenance. We had to trek an hour to another lift, which would take us north of where we needed to go. From there, there were no taxis or buses, so we had to take a train. Then, finally, we had to take a bus to the refuge. The kicker is that this bus only passed our way every couple of hours. We waited 2 hours for a 10 minute bus ride! Mike’s knees were shot and sun poisoning was hitting him hard, so walking anymore was not an option.
Moral of the story, don’t depend on taxis or buses. Make sure you research the bus routes and ski lift timetables! More often than not, the lifts were open. But if you arrive to the lifts too late, you will have to descend on foot. A lot of the lifts closed around 5 or 6pm. Just double check before you go!
How to Prepare
Training and nutrition
Hike as much as you can! Hike, walk, strength train, basically do as much physical activity that you enjoy. Start training for this trek as early as you can. And by training, I also mean your dietary lifestyle. Cook at home and make nutritious meals to help fuel your exercise. I would recommend limiting going out to eat and drinking alcohol as much as possible because your body needs days to recover from that. It’s a 2 steps forward, 5 steps back approach. Food is fuel! And the better you feed your body for months (and years) beforehand, the easier of a time you’ll have on these challenging adventures. That is why I am a huge advocate on healthy hiker foods! Only as a last resort will I refuel with a processed and packaged meal.
Train with your gear
Train with the gear you intend to bring on the TMB. You want to be used to the pack weight! This could be as easy as walking on your local trails or bringing your pack to the gym and getting on the stairmaster! That’s what I did for a while during the winter months. Figuring out what gear to bring is another topic for another blog post if there is interest in that.
The important take-away is to pack your pack exactly as you would pack it before heading out on the trail. Every pair of socks, bottles of water, supplements, pieces of camera equipment, etc. should be packed and trained with ahead of time. Trust me on this! You will feel more confident on the trail knowing that you meticulously packed (and unpacked) your pack over and over again until it was just right.
We made a list of all the gear we needed, acquired anything we didn’t have, packed our packs and went on test hikes. We did some day hikes in the Catskills and portions of the Appalachian trail. Because of those hikes, we dropped several pounds from our packs. Generally, you want to aim for 10% of your body weight, but no more than 20%. REI has a good article all about how much your pack should weigh, read it here!
We watched several videos on YouTube of people who had to ship pounds of excess gear home mid-trek because of the weight! Those costs can add up quickly. Others had to end their treks early because they couldn’t go on with all the pack weight and they were too far up in the mountains to be anywhere near a post office to ship it. Do your future self a favor and square away your gear well in advance so its one less thing to think about.
Research, research, research
You will never be able to research absolutely everything that you’ll need to know, but you can come close to feel prepared. I am hoping that this post will help in that regard! We read guide books, watched hours of YouTube videos and vlogs, followed people on Instagram, and googled similar lessons learned questions about the TMB and the gear to bring.
What we didn’t do, that I would recommend, is talk to people! Reach out to those who have completed the trek and ask them questions. What were your highlights and lowlights and what weren’t you prepared for? What did you think you’d face, but didn’t and vice versa? How long were your hiking days? Did you get sick? Was your pace on par with the literature?
Please feel free to reach out to me if you have questions too 🙂
Take safety seriously
Make sure to make room for not only a first aid kit, but a trauma kit as well. The mountains are beautiful, but they can quickly become dangerous. Knowing what to do in an emergency is important. Countless times in our research, the person wouldn’t talk about first aid. And their “emergency plan” was to wait for other hikers to help them. That sounded crazy to us. Wait for help?! Not have your own plan?? We knew we needed an emergency plan for our trip.
Step 1: Have a First Aid & Trauma Kit
You could buy a standard first aid kit, but sometimes it’s best to make your own. This ensures you know 100% what’s inside and you cater it to your own needs. We added emergency blankets, blister kit, EpiPen’s, cold medicine, pain relievers that worked well for our bodies, in addition to the regular antiseptics and bandages. We also had a trauma kit, which included 2 tourniquets, chest seals, trauma dressing, Sam Splint, etc.
Step 2: Learn how to use it
There are many resources to learn how to use a first aid or trauma kit. Homeland security has a national awareness campaign called Stop the Bleed and it encourages bystanders to become trained, equipped, and empowered to help in a bleeding emergency before professional help arrives. Additionally, you can also take a first aid training class with American Red Cross.
Some people might scoff at having such an intense safety plan for a trail that is pretty busy. But the fault is in thinking that a busy trail is a safe trail. You may get injured on the trail and because unexpected weather came in, no hikers would be on the trail to help you! Or you could be running late on the trail, while everyone else are cozy in their accommodations. That is when Murphy’s law comes into play, you might twist your ankle on a rock because the sun is going down and you’re rushing. Now, you can’t walk and no one is on the trail to help you. Avoid this worst case scenario, and have a plan! Next time, I would also bring a Garmin inReach (a two-way satellite communicator that works where cell phones don’t).
The Worst Refuge we stayed at on the Tour du Mont Blanc
If I could warn every person about this refuge, I would. I hope this blog post helps change people’s minds about booking lol. Auberge la Boërne, at the end of Stage 9, looked like the perfect place to stay. We saw some photos of the dorm-style bunk rooms and knew what we were getting into. However, they didn’t have any photos on their website, especially of the 2-person room we booked. They only have a map of the dorms visible.
After arriving very late due to events out of our control, we rushed to our “room” so we could take a shower. Our room was a closet, actually. It resembled the cupboard under the stairs that Harry Potter lived in at the Dursley residence. Photos below, the likeness is uncanny.
We could not stand up in there, and the door opened up to a busy hallway. We had to struggle getting in and out and changing. Back to the shower, though. I am not exaggerating when I say it was the worst shower of my life lol. Because we arrived late, all the hot water (or any type of warm water) was used up. I took the most piercingly cold shower I’ve ever taken. It must be comparable to jumping into the Antarctic Ocean. I was crying in the shower because it hurt so bad, but I needed to wash the sweat off from the day! My husband didn’t even shower, he couldn’t do it lol. You would think these were the only issues about this place? Think again.
After an inexplicably glacial shower (inexplicable because I took an actual glacial shower, at Refugio Bonatti up in the mountains, that wasn’t nearly as painful as this was and Auberge was closer to civilization), it was dinner time.
Instead of being seated inside for dinner, they sat everyone outside at 7pm. For those that don’t know, it gets pretty cold at night in the mountains, even during peak summer. So here we are, freezing from the shower, not feeling well (that sickness I mentioned earlier was kicking in for my husband quick, plus potential sun poisoning), I had wet hair, and we are sitting outside in the cold. The food was good, simple and family style, but Mike was too cold and sick to eat. And I ate minimally because everyone at the table were using their hands to touch food and pass it along. That just was not my vibe with people I don’t know lol.
Lastly, when we arrived, we ordered a bagged lunch for the following day. An hour later, we decided that we could not do Stage 10 the next morning due to Mike’s illness and my terrible sport’s bra rash that almost opened up skin. We kindly asked if we could cancel our lunch and they said no, it was too late and the food was already accounted for. They were very unaccommodating.
We didn’t even take the bagged lunch the next morning, but we did look inside to see what was so special in there that they couldn’t cancel our order. Inside was a hard boiled egg and a ham and cheese sandwich. Needless to say, the whole experience at Auberge la Boërne was miserable. I would recommend it for those in their early 20’s, but if you are late 20’s or older, the close quarters hostel atmosphere is just not comfortable for us “older” folks.
Our Favorite Refuges & Hotels
The best part about booking a refuge is that your booking comes with the room/dorm, 3 course dinner, and breakfast the next morning. Refuges also offer a packed lunch for the next day, which is very helpful! Hotels have a more comfortable vibe and more creature-comforts.
- Cabane du Combal (refuge in Val Veny – Courmayeur, Italy)
- Situated in the valley with mountains all around – Amazing views!
- Comfortable private room/bathroom available, hot shower
- Awesome bar for a post-hike cocktail
- Dinner was filling and delicious
- Can’t remember if there was Wi-fi, but don’t count on it.
- Hotel Splendid (3* hotel in Champex-Lac, Switzerland)
- Very comfortable rooms with balconies & Swiss views
- THE BEST breakfast on the whole trek, dinner was also very delicious. Dinner was included in our room rate, which is unique for a hotel along the trail.
- Champex-Lac is a cute town to have a full rest day in.
- Refugio Bonatti (refuge in Courmayeur, Italy)
- One of a kind experience on the Italian side of Mont Blanc (Monte Bianco)
- Bare bones rooms, yet comfortable – private rooms available, along with dorms
- Tokens for hot shower are given, my shower didn’t work, so it was glacial xD felt good though
- Great place and views for a beer
- Fun, communal dinner setting with good food (not the best, but good)
- Les Chambres du Soleil (hotel/dorm in Les Chapieux, France)
- Comfortable private rooms available, hot shower but the hot water is limited – save it for short showers and not for sink
- Filling dinner, standard French breakfast
- Not much to do in town
- No Wi-fi at all. You have to pay a small fee at the bakery for 30 minutes of Wi-fi usage. When they close, you are out of luck. A data plan would be useful for this trip, but not the end of the world to unplug a while. Just wish we knew in advance to tell people back home that we would be off-grid certain nights.
- La Grande Ourse (hotel/dorm in Trient, France)
- Very comfortable private rooms, some with private showers and some with shared
- Room with balcony looking at pink church views – beautiful!
- Adequate dinner and breakfast
- Good bar and great views
- L’Auberge de La Maison (5* hotel near Courmayeur, Italy)
- Amazing hotel for rest day(s)
- Luxury Alpine experience with Monte Bianco views
- Perfect place for a massage!
- Hôtel Hameau Albert 1er (5* hotel in Chamonix, France)
- Top notch hotel for post-TMB recovery
- Luxury Alpine experience with Mont Blanc views
- Auberge Du Bois Prin (4* hotel in Chamonix, France)
- Homey auberge with luxurious bathrooms and Mont Blanc views
- Excellent breakfasts!
When to Start Booking
The only time of year to attempt this trek are in the summer months. Mid-June to Mid-September is the season, but July to early September is the most ideal time to book. In June, you might still have snow in areas and in mid-September, many refuges start to close for the season. We went in late August, around the time of the UTMB race, and it was perfect. We only had rain on 1 day and the temperatures were cooler than expected.
If you want a private room, I recommend you start booking refuges in the month of January. Many refuges get booked up in February and March! Hotels are more flexible, but I recommend having all your lodging booked in the beginning of the year. Most reservations are online, and many refuges take reservations via email or phone only.
Trail Inspiration
