Tour du Mont Blanc
Les Contamines to Courmayeur · France into Italy
The best-known trek in the Alps, and you would be walking its finest section — over two high passes and across a border on foot, from French mountain refuges to an Italian valley where dinner is a completely different proposition.
- Nights
- 4 nights in mountain refuges
- Total distance
- 48 km / 30 mi
- Total ascent
- 2,857 m / 9,370 ft
- Highest point
- 2,516 m — Col de la Seigne
What you'd be looking at
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One tap. You can change your mind later.
How it stacks up
Where we'd stay
The refuge at the top of the Bonhomme is closed for rebuilding until 2029, so the route now stops lower down at Les Chapieux. All four nights are mountain refuges; two have hot showers, and nobody gets a private bathroom.
Refuge de la Balme
1,706 mA traditional refuge in the upper Val Montjoie, forty places, dormitory accommodation with half board. An easy first night: you arrive mid-afternoon with the hard day still ahead of you.
FoodDemi-pension in the French style: one set menu, served to everybody at the same long table at the same time. Soup, a main, cheese, a pudding. You are not choosing, you are being fed.
- Places
- 40
- Rooms
- Dormitory
- Board
- Half board
- Season
- June to September
- Washing
- Shared washroom
- Day 1 walk
- 2–3 h from Les Contamines
- Road
- Track only — no public access
Auberge de la Nova, Les Chapieux
1,554 mA hamlet in a side valley with an inn that is well set up for walkers — free hot showers, a drying room, a bar and a small shop. Sixty-three places. After the long day over the two cols, this is a good place to land.
FoodSavoyard cooking in a hamlet that makes its own cheese — Beaufort comes from the next valley. Packed lunches to order, and a small shop if you would rather build your own.
- Places
- 63
- Washing
- Free hot showers
- Board
- Half board, packed lunches
- Also
- Bar, terrace, drying room, small shop
- Arriving
- After the hardest day of the route
- Escape
- Shuttle bus down the valley
Refuge des Mottets
1,864 mAn old family chalet converted to a refuge and renovated in 2010. Four-bed dorms or twin rooms, some with their own shower room; the main showers are in a separate building. Dinner at seven, breakfast at seven. The hut makes its own electricity, so power depends on the weather.
FoodDinner at 7pm sharp, breakfast at 7am, in a converted farm building in the Vallée des Glaciers. Mountain cooking of the tartiflette and cured-ham sort, and a good deal of it.
- Places
- 80
- Rooms
- 4-bed dorms, or twin rooms
- Washing
- Hot showers, separate building
- Meals
- Dinner 7pm, breakfast 7am
- The building
- An old family chalet, rebuilt in 2010
- Power
- Generated on site
- Phone signal
- None in the valley
Rifugio Elisabetta
2,195 mAn Italian Alpine Club hut below the Col de la Seigne, looking up at the Lex Blanche glacier. Dormitory accommodation. The first Italian night, and dinner changes accordingly.
FoodThe first Italian dinner, and the change is the point of the night — polenta with sausage, pasta, a proper coffee machine, and wine that costs half what it did the day before.
- Run by
- Italian Alpine Club
- Rooms
- Dormitory
- Position
- 3 km below the Col de la Seigne
- Faces
- The Glacier de la Lex Blanche
- Country
- Italy — you walked over the border that morning
- Onward
- Bus from Lac de Combal if legs have run out
What you'd be eating
French refuge food is a fixed thing: demi-pension, one menu, everybody eating the same dinner at the same long table at the same hour. Soup, a main, a cheese board, a pudding. You are not ordering, you are being fed — and after seven hours on the Bonhomme that turns out to be exactly right.
Then on day four you walk over the Col de la Seigne and the food changes nationality with the ground under your feet. Beaufort and tartiflette become polenta and sausage, the coffee gets serious, and the wine gets cheaper. Walking across that border in time for dinner is one of the real pleasures of this route.
Tartiflette
Potatoes, lardons and onions baked under a whole Reblochon until the top browns. Invented to sell cheese, perfected to feed walkers. Appears on every menu on the French side.
Beaufort
A hard mountain cheese made in the next valley along, aged for months and sold in the hamlet where it is made. It turns up on the cheese course every night and is worth carrying a wedge of.
Diots de Savoie
Smoked pork sausages simmered in white wine with onions, usually with potatoes or polenta. Plain, salty, hot food at the end of a cold day.
Polenta with sausage
The first meal on the Italian side, and about €15. Soft polenta, sausage and melted cheese, eaten looking at a glacier. The trip changes character over this plate.
Buckwheat galette
A savoury buckwheat crêpe folded around ham, egg and melted cheese, eaten on the terrace looking back down the valley — one of the better lunches on the route.
Pasta, refuge-style
Penne under a rich sauce of slow-cooked cherry tomatoes, olives and garlic, with a bowl of grated cheese alongside — simple, plentiful, and gone in minutes after a long first day.
Cake, on the house plate
A wedge of fruit cake, served on a plate stamped with the rifugio's own name — the unglamorous, satisfying thing that shows up after the polenta at 2,195 m.
Potato gratin
Sliced potatoes baked under melted cheese until the top scorches, served on a wooden board branded with the auberge's name. Exactly the kind of heavy, hot food you want after the hardest day on the route.
Lunch on the trail
Refuges sell packed lunches if you order the night before, and there is a small shop at Les Chapieux. Day 2 over the two cols has no stop of any kind — whatever you eat that day, you carry over the pass.
Dietary needs
The least flexible of the four routes, precisely because dinner is one set menu cooked for forty people. Vegetarian is usually possible with notice at booking; anything beyond that needs confirming refuge by refuge before we commit.
What it costs
Demi-pension in a French refuge is roughly €65–85 per person, dormitory bed, dinner and breakfast included. Packed lunch about €12. Wine by the pichet is cheap on both sides of the border, cheaper on the Italian one.
Special considerations
The hardest bit
Day 2. Two cols and about 775 m of climbing, followed by a 925 m descent, with nowhere to buy food in between. The refuge that used to break this day in half is closed for rebuilding until 2029, so it has to be walked in one go. For an eight-year-old this is a long day — reckon on most of it, with an early start.
If someone's had enough
A shuttle bus serves Les Chapieux, at the end of day 2, and another runs from Les Contamines on day 1. Day 2 itself has no road and no lift between La Balme and Les Chapieux — once you start up the Bonhomme you are committed, which is the honest thing to know about this route.
Where you sleep
Mountain refuges throughout. Les Chapieux and Les Mottets have hot showers; Les Mottets has twin rooms as well as four-bed dorms. La Balme and Elisabetta are dormitory accommodation. Half board is included everywhere. Comfortable in the way a good refuge is comfortable — hot food, a drying room, other walkers — but nobody gets a private bathroom.
Fitting twenty-one people
Refuges on the Tour du Mont Blanc are small and book out very early. Twenty-one places on four consecutive nights is a real constraint and may need splitting across neighbouring refuges.
Getting there
Geneva (GVA) — 1h15 by road to Les Contamines
When to book
Refuge bookings for the following summer typically open in the winter and the popular ones go quickly. With the Croix du Bonhomme closed until 2029, more people will be competing for beds at La Balme, Les Chapieux and Les Mottets, so treat early 2028 as the deadline and have the decision made in 2027.
Days either side
Courmayeur at the end, then the Skyway cable car to 3,466 m, or a day on the balcony path to Rifugio Bertone for the Grandes Jorasses. A bus through the Mont Blanc tunnel puts you in Chamonix in under an hour.
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