Tour du Mont Blanc Day 7: Monte Bianco to Balmes

jana meerman tmb tour du mont blanc italy monte bianco (1)

This is the blog post about our seventh 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 7: Monte Bianco to Balmes

Total distance: 29.7km

Total elevation gain: 1792m

Total elevation loss: 1765m

Refuge we stayed at: Refuge de la Balme

Countries: Italy and France

Our final long day - and by far our hardest. We managed to convince the Italian hut guy to give us breakfast half an hour early so we could get on the trail before the sun was too high in the sky. And then, it was back out into the mountains. The morning sun shone brightly and my knees cried out with sharp pain but the morale was high with our final challenging day to tackle.

This stretch of the TMB - the last section of the trail we’d be doing in Italy - was exquisite. We hiked past lakes and rivers while fresh wind kept us cool, with the promise of our final border crossing back into France motivating us to climb. My camera probably got the hardest workout of all of us as I tried my best to capture the views in every direction, with the mountains looking more majestic and epic the further upwards we climbed.

And then - France. We were back.

Our first steps back into France saw us descending from the Italian border, half-running and half-hiking our way down the switchbacks towards La ville des Glaciers where we stopped for lunch, shaded by the gigantic French army trucks also taking their rest at the only public toilet in town.

With a steep summit already under our belts, we turned our focus for the afternoon to reaching Col du Bonhomme. Sitting at an elevation of 2600m, this would be the highest peak we’d be reaching on the entire TMB. It was an absolutely brutal climb. Made no more motivating by the man who told us "ladies, I hate to break it to you, but you’ve still got a long way to go," we all struggled our way up the steep and long climb up the loose shards of rock towards the summit. When we arrived, shattered and exhausted, we fell asleep lying sideways on the rock in the sun before realizing we still had a long descent towards our hut for the night.

I hit a wall during that descent, ending up about half an hour behind the crew, every step sending shooting pains up my calves and my knees feeling like they were being stabbed by knives. Arriving at Refuge de la Balme felt surreal, the evening light already settling on the day. I was visibly, mentally, physically and emotionally exhausted. We inhaled our dinner and passed out early - interrupted by a midnight dash to the outdoor toilet and a few quiet minutes all alone under the brightest night sky I’ve seen in a very long time and attempted a bit of astrophotography, my first since New Zealand.

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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