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I have a few friends planning a 12 day trip in order to make this 100 mile hike, and we were invited to join them. The wife and I have hiked portions of the Appalachian trail outside of Pennsylvania and the Inca Trail in Peru, but that's the extent of our experiences on multi-day duration hikes in elevation. If you've done Mont Blanc, how was your experience? Did you need time prior to hitting the trail in order to acclimate to the elevation changes, and do you happen to have any advice for the amateur? Thanks in advance! EDIT: It'll be the Tour Du Mont Blanc. A Bad King fucked around with this message at 15:25 on Mar 8, 2017 |
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Mar 7, 2017 23:36
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 12:40 |
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A Bad King posted:I have a few friends planning a 12 day trip in order to make this 100 mile hike, and we were invited to join them. The wife and I have hiked portions of the Appalachian trail outside of Pennsylvania and the Inca Trail in Peru, but that's the extent of our experiences on multi-day duration hikes in elevation. Do you mean literally Mont Blanc, or do you mean La Haute Route? I've done several legs of the route. It's honestly not that high--rarely if ever above 3000m--so you probably don't need to acclimate, but sleeping at elevation (personally) wrecks me unless I'm well acclimatized for 3-4 days, which is why I've only done legs as day trips. A lot of the huts/hotels are around 2200-2500m. It depends how fit you are. If you're sore after Day 2, then it's going to be tough to do another 10 days of hiking. It also depends what your backup plans are for bad weather, which over 12 days is almost certainly going to hit you with a thunderstorm which could be quite dangerous at many points in the route. Fortunately it's pretty easy to just skip parts of it — so you can take a bus down and hang out in Sion or Martingy or whatever, then go back when the weather's nice and continue or just skip to the next leg. You don't need a guide or anything, it's all super well posted and signed. But, make sure to have a topo map with you, ideally a digital one if you will have a phone with GPS, e.g. https://map.wanderland.ch/?lang=en&route=all&bgLayer=pk&layers=Wanderland&resolution=22.55&X=613125&Y=107572 . Unfortunately I've still never found such a website that has more legible maps than that, which is annoying because many of the routes are only visible at high-mag but there's no way to select one, and at high-mag there are like a million routes that make it kind of hard to figure out. In summer, huts and mountain hotels can book completely out, especially on weekends. So, book ahead (if you can, sometimes yes sometimes no) or bring a tent. I did the Salkantay trek and it was similar in difficulty to the parts of the Haute Route I've done. Long downhill sections are more likely to ruin your next day(s) than uphill sections, regarding leg soreness.
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Mar 8, 2017 11:45
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Saladman posted:Do you mean literally Mont Blanc, or do you mean La Haute Route? I've done several legs of the route. It's honestly not that high--rarely if ever above 3000m--so you probably don't need to acclimate, but sleeping at elevation (personally) wrecks me unless I'm well acclimatized for 3-4 days, which is why I've only done legs as day trips. A lot of the huts/hotels are around 2200-2500m. It will be the La Haute Route. I am not ready for a mountain summit. We will have 5 friends + the 2 of us, and we've all been referring it to "Tour du Mont Blanc," so thanks for clarifying! I'll be carrying <30lbs in a 50L daypack, so I'm not too worried about wearing myself out. Thanks for the frame of reference regarding Salkantay. That puts this into perspective; it's similar to Peru, but 10 days instead of 5, and I'll have the opportunity to shower every night. Is there a significant crowd on the trail?
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Mar 8, 2017 13:25
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A Bad King posted:Is there a significant crowd on the trail? No. Since everyone starts at completely different times of day, you'll cross people fairly often and always see people in the distance, but almost never in large groups except around obvious stopping areas on the route (e.g. cols and local summits). It's not like Inca Trail when all the groups arrive and start at basically the same time. Even though it's not crowded, huts/hotels are reasonably likely to book out, especially since sometimes big groups will book an entire hut (e.g. schoolkids on summer break). They usually allow you to camp on the property and use their facilities though for a few francs. The Tour du Mont Blanc is also a hiking route of similar difficulty, length, and location as the Haute Route. I've done much less of that (only the northern ~quarter between Les Houches and Champex), but I'd guess it's more or less the same conceptually as La Haute Route the whole way. Tour du Mont Blanc: http://www.chamonix.net/sites/default/files/nodeimages/trailbl-tour-du-mb-0004.jpg?itok=0DBwFXKh Haute Route: http://www.alpineexploratory.com/images/maps/walkershauteroute-map.gif E: This route comparison also makes them look pretty similar https://www.alpenwild.com/staticpage/tour-du-mont-blanc-vs-the-haute-route/ . Apparently Tour du Mont Blanc has more people on it (which is personally surprising, since everyone I know has picked to do the Haute Route, but maybe that's because I've been living in Switzerland and not France..). I'd be surprised if "crowded" for Tour du Mont Blanc meant anything like "crowded" on the Inca/Salkantay trails, except the parts immediately near Courmayeur, Chamonix, and Zermatt. If you're planning on tent camping, I guess you could just get into Chamonix and decide on the spot regarding weather forecasts which route to take and which direction to go. Saladman fucked around with this message at 15:07 on Mar 8, 2017 |
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Mar 8, 2017 14:57
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Saladman posted:No. Since everyone starts at completely different times of day, you'll cross people fairly often and always see people in the distance, but almost never in large groups except around obvious stopping areas on the route (e.g. cols and local summits). It's not like Inca Trail when all the groups arrive and start at basically the same time. Even though it's not crowded, huts/hotels are reasonably likely to book out, especially since sometimes big groups will book an entire hut (e.g. schoolkids on summer break). They usually allow you to camp on the property and use their facilities though for a few francs. Okay, to clarify, I believe the group is leaning toward the Tour Du Mont Blanc. It's a circuitous route around the mountain, ~100 miles, terrain is marked and I've heard that it's rather nice in July/August. I've been unable to do much research on my own part, and I guess I have some reading to do. We start in Chamonix and finish in Chamonix, then take a train to Nice for some beach and recovery before heading home. Thanks again for the help.
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Mar 8, 2017 15:25
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 12:40 |
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I had a couple friends do the TMD. They're pretty good hikers (I think they did Kilimanjaro the year before) and they enjoyed it a lot, but said the up and down got a little old. Having done parts of the Haute Route, and hearing that they are similar, I can understand. Up 1200 meters and then down 1200 meters would get old after 10 days. It got old after two, actually. A lot of your days are just a long slog up to a col, and then down into the next valley. Rinse and repeat. I'll share the same story I told on the other Haute Route thread. July is supposed to be pretty nice in those mountains, but I was there July last year right after a big storm came through. It dropped a significant amount of snow and a section that was not noted as being particularly difficult ended up being completely impassable to us since we weren't prepared to hike through 3 foot snow drifts. July *should* be fine, but there is the possibility of bad weather.
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Mar 11, 2017 04:41
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