The last week of December is when this trip is actually decided. That is when most of the refuges on the circuit put their following summer online, all of them within a few days of each other, and it is why we reserve the Mont Blanc circuit two winters ahead rather than treating it as a summer reservation. A request that reaches this desk in April for the coming July is not a request for the circuit on hut nights. It is a request for whatever four of the nine nights happen to be unsold, which is a different trip with a different shape.
The loop is about 105 miles with something over 32,000 feet of ascent, crossing between France, Italy and Switzerland and coming back into France. Done in nine walking nights it averages a little under twelve miles a day, but the average lies: the day over the Grand Col Ferret is long and the day down into Trient is short, and the refuges sit where the mountain lets them sit, not where the arithmetic would prefer.
- Notice
- Eighteen months or more, the book opens once
- How far ahead
- Eighteen to twenty four months, counted not in weeks but in release mornings, of which there is one per refuge per year.
- What has to be reserved first
- The Refuge du Lac Blanc side of the loop is not the constraint; the constraint is Rifugio Bonatti and Refuge Bonhomme on the same trip, both of which open their online books in the last week of December for the following summer and both of which lose every Friday and Saturday night in July and August within about four hours of opening. What is left by the afternoon is Sunday through Wednesday, which is workable, and by February what is left is late June or the second week of September, which changes the trip: the Grand Col Ferret can hold snow in June and some refuges have not opened their upper dormitories yet. The fallback, if a single night in the chain cannot be had, is a valley night in Courmayeur or Champex with a transfer up to the trail head the next morning, which costs you the evening on the mountain and about ninety minutes of the walking day.
- Nights
- 9
- From
- $4,180 per person
- Shape of it
- hut to hut on foot, bags moved ahead
- What is in the figure
- Nine nights in mountain refuges, half board, mostly shared dormitory; bag transfer between valley points on seven of the nine days; a printed day by day with distances, ascent in feet and the two variant options; arrival transfer from Geneva to Les Houches and the return from Chamonix; the refuge deposits paid on release morning on your behalf; two valley meals on the days the refuge kitchen closes early.
- What is not
- Flights to and from Geneva; lunches on the trail and anything bought at the refuge bar, which is cash in euros and often the only cash you will need; the Col des Montets bus and the Courmayeur valley bus, both a few euros each; the lift at La Flégère or Le Brévent if you take the aided variant; a sleeping bag liner, which every refuge on the loop requires and none of them provide; the single supplement, which exists only in the four refuges with private rooms and is not offered at all in the other five; the Italian tourist tax collected per night at the refuge desk; anything at all on the two nights you may spend in a valley if the chain breaks.
- Who it does not suit
- People who cannot commit to specific calendar dates almost two years out, since refuge reservations are dated and not transferable between nights. Anyone wanting a private room every night, which the mountain does not have. Anyone unwilling to walk five to eight hours a day for nine consecutive days, carrying a day pack, with the largest single day gaining roughly 3,300 feet.
Cols, valleys and the three sides of the massif
The circuit is really three valleys and the passes between them. The French side, from Les Houches over the Col de Voza and up the Bon Nant, is grazing country with hard packed track underfoot and a good deal of the ascent done in the first two hours of the morning. The Col du Bonhomme at 7,641 feet is the first real gate, and it holds old snow in a north facing gully well into early July most years, which is a walking surface question, not a hazard rating: it means poles and an extra half hour.
Italy is the middle third and the change is abrupt. You come over the Col de la Seigne at 8,255 feet and the whole Miage face is in front of you, and from there the balcony path to Rifugio Bonatti runs high on the eastern side of the Val Veny and the Val Ferret with very little shade. Ground is stony, the exposure is to sun rather than to drop, and the water sources are marked but two of them run dry by mid August in a hot year.
Switzerland is the quietest third and the least photographed. The Fenêtre d'Arpette variant, at 8,743 feet, is a boulder field on both sides and takes most people ninety minutes longer than the map suggests; the Bovine alternative through the oak pasture above Champex is gentler and puts you into Trient earlier. We plan for one and hold the other in reserve, because the choice is made on the morning by what the col looks like, not in a spreadsheet in Greensboro.
Release mornings, and the order in which the beds go
There is no single system. Each refuge is its own business with its own calendar, and the only thing they share is the habit of opening the whole summer at once. Practically, that means one morning in late December decides seven of your nine nights, one morning in January decides another, and the Swiss huts often wait until February, by which time the French and Italian nights are fixed and the Swiss ones have to be made to fit around them. The order of the loop is counterclockwise for most people, which means demand piles onto the same refuges on the same weekday, and midweek beds survive hours longer than weekend ones.
The other thing nobody prints: a refuge that shows nothing available for your date in March may open a handful of places in May, when it counts its staff beds and its guide beds and releases what it does not need. That is a real second chance and it is worth waiting for, but it is a handful of places and it is not a plan.
- Late December
- French and Italian books open; Friday and Saturday nights in July and August gone within hours
- January
- Weekend nights across the whole loop are gone; midweek chains still assemble cleanly
- February
- Swiss refuges open; by now your dates are chosen for you by what France and Italy left
- April
- Peak season chains no longer link end to end; late June and September still hold
- May
- Small staff releases appear at one or two refuges, a few beds each, no pattern to them
- June
- Only broken chains remain, meaning one or two valley nights and a morning transfer back up
From your first message to a chain of nine dated nights
We answer a message the same working day and the priced answer runs two to four working days behind it, but the reservation itself waits for the mountain. What we do in between is decide the direction of travel, the two variant days and the exact nine dates, then sit on the release mornings with your details already typed.
- First messageWe ask which summer, how many walking days you want, and whether the Fenêtre d'Arpette is in or out
- Written figureTwo to four working days, with the nine nights named as refuges and the two valley fallbacks named as well
- Release morningDeposits go in the moment each book opens, refuge by refuge, over roughly six weeks in winter
- ConfirmationYou get the dated chain in writing once every link holds; if one link fails we tell you which night moved and to where
Ask about a summer that is not next summer
If you are reading this in spring and hoping for July, say so anyway and we will tell you honestly what is still linkable. If you are reading it in autumn, you are early, which on this particular loop is the only useful thing to be.