See Exodus Mont Blanc Circuit. A Challenging walk around Mont Blanc in 10 days, 150km and 10,000m of ascent. Camping or Hotel options available.
Mont Blanc, actually is on the horizon, you don’t see it often but it’s a wonderful journey with fresh air and good company. However, you do need good legs to be able to scale Ben Nevis three days running.
The altitude isn’t an issue until you take the cable car to the Aiguille du Midi and you grind to an unexpected halt.
What? bit of a work-in-progress blog! It was years ago, and any comments may be mush in the brain. The camping option is much better than the hotel trip, as long as you can cope with crawling in to a tent on your hands and knees, after all you are exhausted from the exercise and you’ll sleep anywhere, so why pay £600 more for the dubious privilege of chicken and chips every night. Our campsite cook Graham rustled up fish pie and polenta (don’t tell them, they’ll never know) amongst other delights and although we helped with the washing up, our bon-hommie made up for anything camping could throw at us.
It’s around an hour from Geneva airport to Chamonix, which makes it a magnet for skiers, and once the motorway drive deposited us below the glacier at Les Bossons, we got to grips with our campsite co-operation rules and our Decathlon pop-up tents. Ably demonstrated by John and Graham the pop-up is fine, it’s just folding away that’s the pain. We’ll have to do that every morning before breakfast so we can get an early start on to the hills.
In all, crossing France, Switzerland and Italy before returning to France without the need for passports, we managed to make friends with some Kiwis but lost our Canadian friend three days in because of an unfortunate ligament ailment; we realised that anyone whose surname is Kelly is bound to be known as Ned; completed our Tai chi exercises before setting off; learned how to identify coniferous trees from cones and leaves; managed a number of table tennis and baby foot games; wore out any number of knee joints (<=2 per person); wild camped with some Dutch trekkers and their pack horses; de-camped to a bunk house pending imminent flooding; but all in all returned elated enjoying spectacular views and finishing with a true sense of achievement. Recommend the trip to anyone!
 | We started from Camping Les Marmottes in Les Bossons |
A 105e ride up the cable car to 3335m from Courmayeur (la Palud 1370) included a stop off at the botannic gardens.
