Tour du Mont Blanc Day 3: Lac Blanc to Charamillon

jana meerman tour du mont blanc tmb france chamonix charamillon (21)

This is the blog post about our third day hiking the Tour du Mont Blanc. Check out my summary post with all my tips for planning your own TMB!

The Tour du Mont Blanc is a 165km hiking loop around Mont Blanc, with nearly 9km of elevation gain into the sky, through 3 countries: France, Switzerland and Italy. You can go as fast or as slow as you want, staying in your choice of the many refuges (mountain huts) along the way at night. I know people who've done the whole loop in 3 days, and others who take it slow and go for 12 days. Connor, a friend and fellow hiker from Vancouver, and I planned a 9-day trek on the TMB.

Day 3: Lac Blanc to Charamillon

Total distance: 10.6km

Total elevation gain: 677m

Total elevation loss: 1109m

Refuge we stayed at: Gîte d'Alpage Les Ecuries de Charamillon

Countries: France

We rose early, having slept soundly under the comfiest bedding we would find on the entire trail. The early morning light was barely peeping through the open windows, the cool mountain air brushing through the room. In under a minute we were dressed and out the door, joining a handful of other trekkers lakeside to watch the first colours of the day light up in the reflection on Lac Blanc. The quiet stillness reverberated around us, our eyes trying to absorb as much as we could, our minds satiated with wonder at this incredible world.

Sunrise came and went and, after a light breakfast of bread and jam, we packed up all of our things, brushed our teeth in the communal bathroom downstairs with everybody, wished everybody well on their various stages of the TMB. Some people on day one, some people on day seven, and a myriad of different languages spoken.

The focus of today was to get back down the mountain we climbed up last night, all the way back down to the elevation gain of the town. The morning light danced across the valleys and lakes. We had a cloudless sky and beating sun on our arms as we passed incredible landscapes, with Mont Blanc, a never-changing constant on the horizon line. As we continued our circumnavigation of this impressive peak, we spotted the hut we'd passed the day before off in the distance, waved at the various wildlife, the ibex silhouetted proudly against the mountains and the birds flittering among the bushes.

We approached the acclaimed ladder section, facing a steady stream of hikers in the opposite direction, hiking counterclockwise - the “normal” TMB route. After waiting patiently on a tiny platform, the planks haphazardly nailed around a tree, we called out to the long line below to wait as we scurried past.

Shortly after, I went to sidestep yet another oncoming group of hikers, misstepped off the rock, twisted my left ankle, and, with my 10kg pack weighing me down, landed hard on my tailbone. Some spray ice from the Italians I had been attempting to let past, a bit of a cry, plenty of kindhearted words of encouragement from TMB-ers, and my hiking boot was laced back up and we gingerly continued downwards. It was a painful rest of the day, emphasized by my frustration with myself at getting 2 injuries when it was only Day 3. It can be a scary thing to have an injury when you're on the trails, much more so when you're on high up in the mountains somewhere with a long way down still to go.

With patience and a slower pace than hoped, we finally arrived in the little town of Le Tour where, to my joy, we discovered that the only open restaurant in the area had a vegan tofu burger on the menu, the perfect balm for my bruised ego. A banana split sealed the deal and our energy was refilled to tackle the steep climb up a ski hill in direct sunshine to our tiny little refuge for the evening. As we walked all the way up today's mountain, we were accompanied by three Vietnamese men training for the Ultra TMB, due to happen just a few days after we were planning to finish our trek. It was a hot climb, but a fairlystraightforward one, and we were greeted at the top with a hot shower, wifi, comfy beds, incredible panoramic views, wildflowers and cows.

We finished the day sitting high in the mountains looking out at a herd of cows on the mountain opposite, their bells clanging in the distance as they traverse the hilltops. Mont Blanc, ever shrouded in its little blanket of clouds, stood proudly at the end of the valley.

My ankle was swollen and my tailbone bruised and as I sat watching the fading light of day over the mountains, I hoped that the next six days could continue as the first three days had.

Jana Meerman

Hi! I’m Jana, a Dutch-German-British-Canadian with a dream of seeing every country in the world. I am a storyteller, photographer and adventurer passionate about documenting and sharing my travels.

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