The classic 105-mile mountaineering route draws 80,000 walkers a year. This new group trip lets you experience the beauty of the loop — without camping or carrying your luggage
In 1767 the Swiss geologist Horace-Bénédict de Saussure completed the first known circuit of the Mont Blanc massif, navigating the high passes with no trail, his kit and provisions in tow, relying on remote farming outposts for any chance of a roof. That 105-mile loop through France, Italy and Switzerland has since become one of the world’s great long-distance hikes. Busier, too, than Saussure would recognise, and today, never more so. Footfall has doubled in the wake of the pandemic, swelling to some 80,000 hikers a year — and with it, there are many new ways to take on the route.
“For most of its history, camping or sleeping in haylofts was the only way to go about the Tour Mont Blanc,” the seasoned British mountain leader Jason Day says when we meet up in the heart of Chamonix. Granite spires and snow-capped peaks prod the clear August sky above the lively French town’s gabled roofs. “Until fairly recently, the route was something for only devoted mountaineers — and masochists, frankly,” he adds. “You’ll be relieved to hear that’s no longer the case, and it’s certainly not how your trek has been designed.”
Underscoring his point, Day proceeds to pop a cork and pour each member of our tour group a flute of champagne. This allows our newly formed party of five — a mix of ages, from thirties to sixties, with a variety of trekking experience — to take the edge off our anticipation as he spreads out large maps in the saloon of our 150-year-old mountaineering hotel. He traces the route we’ll embark upon tomorrow: seven days of hiking plus one rest day, heading anticlockwise around the Mont Blanc massif, under the gaze of western Europe’s highest peak at 4,805m.
But unlike many of the hikers who tackle the 11-stage circuit each year in the clement months between June and September, camping in bivouac sites or bunking in basic refuges, we’re opting for something altogether more comfortable and compact. Cutting out crowded and less-noteworthy sections, we’ll enjoy 50 miles of the most show-stopping scenery, with our luggage and transfers taken care of by a driver.
While our route is still a challenge — crossing five of the trail’s highest passes, and ascending nearly 5,500m in total — we’ll have time to dine and recuperate each evening at a different boutique lodge, with private rooms. With all the logistics firmly in hand, I’m just left to worry if my legs will hold up.
What you need to know
- Where is it? The Tour du Mont Blanc is 105-mile loop through the French, Swiss and Italian Alps
- When is best to go? Spring through summer until early autumn, winter is the ski season and the route is snowbound
- Insider tip Try mountain tipples such as a bombardino in Courmayeur (a warm cocktail of advocaat, brandy and whipped cream), génépi and good Swiss white wine in Switzerland.
Warming up with a short hike from Chamonix
But it seems even that’s been taken care of. Day one is a gentle five-mile sweep of the Grand Balcon Sur above the Chamonix valley, designed to ease us into the expedition with a taste of the twisting, rocky trail to come — road-testing our kit, or gaps therein, while still in reach of Chamonix’s high street. It’s a glorious initiation: the diffuse light of the summer morning gives way to crisp views as the sun crests over the icy massif, revealing forking glacial tongues shredded with crevasses of the Mer de Glace, Bossons and Taconnaz. Clusters of aiguilles, too, French for “needles” — slender pinnacles that Day names with easy familiarity: Grépon, Blatière, du Plan, du Midi. The sky above is punctuated with the crescent-moon canopies of paragliders; beside the path, wild blueberries decorate the scrub.
“There’s been a lot of change over the years, but the spirit of the Tour is still strong — the joy of navigating through three countries, with different cultures, languages and cuisine; the esprit de corps on the trail among the hikers,” Tanya Perret, the architect of our tour, tells me when she joins us the next day. We’ve paused to soak our feet in a glacial stream after the knee-crunching day-two descent of the Col de Tricot — part of a scenic variant of the main trail, selected to show us wilder and less-crowded slopes. It’s utterly idyllic: a herd of caramel cattle serenade us with tinkling cowbells while silken puffs of fireweed seeds bob on the breeze.
The tour is with Live Breathe Hike
Perret’s Chamonix-based trekking company, Live Breathe Hike, is founded on serious experience; an international mountain leader herself, she helped curate some of the very first bespoke Tour du Mont Blanc packages three decades back. “We used to camp, cooking for clients on stoves. Popularity increased, gradually at first; small gîtes and farms started selling meals, then basic rooms. The infrastructure around the mountain refuges became more formal too. But it’s in the wake of the pandemic that the volume of hikers has become a concern locally,” she says.
Refuges along the route now book out up to six months in advance, a squeeze born of a broader uptick in travellers seeking the great outdoors since lockdowns lifted. Interest in the trail has also been bolstered by the growing fame of the UTMB, the now-legendary ultramarathon launched with about 700 contestants in 2003, for which some 10,000 runners and 50,000 spectators now descend on the route every August.
“The pressure on the ecosystem is plain to see,” Perret tells me, pocketing an energy-bar wrapper fluttering in the grass. “And when we combine that with the rapid melting and destabilising of the glaciers, it’s clear more regulation will be needed to protect the trail and ensure everyone continues to have a positive experience.”
History and geology on the way
In the face of such ancient, towering geology, it would be easy to trivialise humanity and its endeavours — and yet somehow, the mountains, driven skywards by the collision of the African and Eurasian plates 110 million years ago, force them into moving relief.
As I hike away from the dispersed hamlets of Les Contamines-Montjoie on day three, my thoughts linger on the isolated baroque church of Notre Dame de la Gorge, created to offer a final Mass to those braving the southern pass, and the stout Roman bridge nearby that far outweathered the civilisation that built it. The next day, awaking in a charming little chalet-hotel beside the glassy waters of Lac de Roselend, we set off to traverse the verdant Vallée des Glaciers, peppered with rustic farms. When we push over the broad saddle of the Col de la Seigne into Italy, tumbledown barracks, memorials and the remnants of gun tunnels dug into the Pyramides Calcaires under Mussolini cast the shattered ridges of the southern massif in an even more dramatic light.
Many of these details would have been missed if not for Day, whose authoritative knowledge of the landscape is shaped not only by decades of guiding, but also, it turns out, an earlier career as a geography teacher. The origins of shimmering mica and evaporite in the rocks are illuminated; he also spots marmots and bearded vultures with eagle eyes. (“I always try and match the right guide to a group,” Perret had told me earlier in the trip, with a satisfied smile.) His presence on the trail isn’t just a boon to us; during our trip, Day reroutes lost hikers, dissuades a group from trampling off-path and degrading the trail, and even stages a rescue, rappelling down a slope after a novice camper.
“A lot of people see pictures of the Alps online and think, ‘How hard could it be? You buy some shoes, you walk.’ But without experience, and without a guide, you don’t necessarily understand how to be safe in the mountains, how to conserve the environment while still enjoying a trail,” he says.
A rest day in Courmayeur
After four heady days, we’re let loose for a much-needed rest day in the chocolate-box Italian town of Courmayeur, which we find in the throes of its annual mid-August Alpine Guides Festival (August 15). Old boys in fustian britches and feathered hats strut around the centre with wooden ice axes slung over their shoulders, honouring the brave men — often peasants and crystal hunters, who understood the peaks — that guided Europe’s elite in their quest to conquer summits during the mid 19th-century golden age of alpinism. As quaint as the proceedings are, and as tempting as the town’s boutiques and bars prove to be, I’m itching to press on.
The massif takes on a softer, more pastoral aspect in the north as we cross next into Switzerland over the Grand Col Ferret. At 2,537m, it’s the highest pass on the Tour, but one the whole group takes in its stride. “Record time!” Day says, beaming. “You’re all finding your rhythm.”
Some days we visit dairy farms and remote refuges, sipping tall glasses of raw milk or trying home-baked cakes and sharing stories with other hikers. Others, we quietly traverse lichen-draped forests, nibbling on wild sorrel and rolling spruce needles between our fingers to release the resinous scent.
In a break from our usual lunchtime routine (fresh baguette sandwiches, carried in our daypacks), we stop along the trail for croûte au fromage at the small dairy farm of Alpage de la Peule — crusty bread soaked in white wine and generously slathered with hot, homemade Alpine cheese, accompanied by a tall glass of raw milk fresh from cows in the meadows in front. We linger at the wooden tables on the sunny terrace, chatting to other hikers, our legs pleasantly heavy, our appetites thoroughly satisfied.
Even after a week on the Tour, with its meditative cadence of early starts, hearty meals and bone-tired slumber, the trip still delivers surprises: at the pretty village of Champex-Lac in Switzerland, Day announces an evening swim, leading us into the mirrored lake in front of our hotel to soothe aching muscles, just as golden hour settles on the scene. Two days later, at the Col de Balme, our guide produces another bottle and we toast our success before descending on gondolas to the exquisite Heliopic Hotel & Spa in Chamonix. But it’s in the lake, doing a languid crawl among rainbow trout and spindly grey herons, that my appreciation for this fragile corner of the Alps takes root. I may not have hiked every unforgiving mile, nor slummed it in haylofts like the alpinists of yore, but the mountains, it turns out, don’t ask for suffering. Only your attention.
Amelia Duggan was a guest of Live Breathe Hike, which has nine nights’ all-inclusive on the Tour du Mont Blanc 10-Day Comfy Package from £3,860pp, including guide and luggage transfers (livebreathehike.com). Fly to Geneva