The Tour du Mont Blanc Day 1: Arrival Day
Saturday 3 August 2024
The adventure begins. My bestie Beastie is ready, I sure hope I am!! Funny, this particular adventure has me more nervous than any I’ve done to date. At least that I can remember. Excited, nervous, curious, hopeful, did I mention EXCITED…a bit of all of all of it.
I have had the Tour du Mont Blanc (TMB) in my heart and on my list ever since hearing about it. This multi-day through hike lands on all the lists by all those people who make the lists…you know the ones, “The Top 10 Most Beautiful Hikes in the World” kind of lists. I know it will be epic. Making it even more special, my brilliant beautiful niece, Jamie, is joining me for her very first long distance through hike and first adventure of this type. She called one day saying she wanted to do some traveling with me this summer. I said, “well…there’s this trip I’m planning on taking.” She was totally game and so here we are!! Whoop Whoop!!
The TMB circumnavigates Mont Blanc, a glaciated massif standing 15,777 ft (4,808 m) tall, the tallest peak in Western Europe and is ranked 11th in the world in topographic prominence. The whole Massif Du Mont Blanc extends for about 25 miles and has 11 summits. Our hike, offering spectacular views from every angle, will take us from France through Italy and Switzerland returning us to France and the place we start.
The complete Tour du Mont Blanc circuit we are hiking is approximately 107-miles-long (170km), with an intimidating accumulated elevation gain and loss of around 32,800 ft (9997 m). Compare that to the height of Mt. Everest at 29,031 ft (8,848.86 m) and you might well understand my trepidation & excitement even with all the long-distance hikes I have under my belt. The highest point we will summit on our trek is 8,307 ft (2,532 m) at the Grand Col Ferret; it marks the boundary between Switzerland and Italy. The other key passes are the Col du Bonhomme 8,133 ft (2,479 m), Col de la Seigne 8,255 ft (2,516 m) and Col de Balme 7,188 ft (2,191m).
Jamie flew in from Minneapolis and we met at the Geneva Airport when she landed. We made our way to Chamonix via shuttle bus to overnight in an Airbnb and let Jamie get caught up with this time zone. Synchronistically we shared the shuttle with 2 darling gals from the United States, Carly & Maddie, who also were about to start the Tour du Mont Blanc hike. We shared our stories of how this all came to pass, little did we know at the time we would all soon become “Trail Fam” as you will see in later posts. For now, it was just a really great connection & conversation, we didn’t even exchange information. We did regret that when we realized it was too late.
We checked into our Airbnb and went out to explore gorgeous Chamonix on search of food and wine.
Tomorrow, we will make our way to Les Houches ( a village very near here) for an overnight and Monday, August 5th we start our trek. We were sending ourselves love and holding a vision that our bodies would exceed all expectations and we were going to safely rock the TMB!!
gallery photo
Our first night in Chamonix. I love this town!!
**last pic, our airbnb for the night.
