The Trail
The Tour du Mont Blanc stage by stage
All eleven stages with distances, climbing and walking times, plus which days are genuinely the hard ones.
How the circuit breaks down
The classic Tour du Mont Blanc splits into eleven stages, walked anticlockwise from Les Houches. You can see every stage with its distance, climbing and walking time on our trip pages, so this piece is about which days actually matter.
The days that will test you
Val Ferret to La Fouly is the longest stage on the circuit: 20.7 kilometres, 1,340 metres of climbing, and the crossing of the Grand Col Ferret into Switzerland. It takes most parties eight hours. Start early.
Les Contamines to Les Chapieux crosses the Col du Bonhomme and the Col de la Croix du Bonhomme, both above 2,300 metres, one after the other. It looks moderate on paper and it is not. The descent off the Croix du Bonhomme holds snow into early July most years.
Chamonix to Les Houches, the closing stage, has the biggest descent of the whole tour at more than 1,600 metres. On tired legs at the end of eleven days, this is the day that injures people. Poles, and take it slowly.
The days that reward you
Courmayeur to Val Ferret climbs to Rifugio Bertone and then follows the Mont de la Saxe ridge with the Grandes Jorasses filling the sky. If you only remember one afternoon of the tour, it will probably be this one.
Tré-le-Champ to Chamonix is short and spectacular: ladders bolted to the rock above Tré-le-Champ, then the Grand Balcon Sud traverse.
Les Chapieux to Val Veny takes you over the Col de la Seigne into Italy, which is the moment the massif opens up in front of you.
Planning your days
Two things worth knowing. First, quoted walking times exclude breaks, and you will take breaks, so add an hour or more to plan your refuge arrival. Second, refuges serve dinner at a fixed time, usually between 6.30 and 7.30pm, and they will not wait. Working backwards from dinner is a better way to plan a departure time than working forwards from breakfast.
Shorter options
You do not have to walk all eleven stages. The first four make a natural long weekend from Les Houches to Courmayeur, and the last seven make a week from Courmayeur back to Les Houches. Both are complete routes in their own right rather than truncated versions of the full circuit.