Sensational terrain and scenery The Mont Blanc Highlights are very much that. If you get good weather with good visibility the views are stunning, the walking wonderful and it will be a thoroughly enjoyable week.
How to make it the whole TMB This trip offers more of the TMB route than most of the trips that I looked into, but it doesn’t do it all. If you read the trip notes carefully you’ll realise that there is a section in Val Ferret which may be missed out, and the section from Courmayeur to Lac Combal is bypassed. When we were on the trip we realised there were two other bits to be missed out. From Les Houches towards Brevent, and from Plan Praz to La Flegere. The good news is that, if you do want to do the whole tour then it can be done within the trip: Val Ferret - get your leader to take the bus all the way back up to Arp Nouva, where you stopped the previous day, rather than at an earlier stop point. There is plenty of time, this is what our group did. From Courmayeur - you can catch a bus to Courmayeur on your day off, walk the route to where it drops down to the path to Lac Combal, & then walk down to La Visaille where you can get a bus back to Courmayeur/the campsite. Les Houches - either persuade your leader to take the bus back to Les Houches & start from there, or walk the missing section on the final day off Plan Praz to La Flegere - add this onto the final planned day. You then take the cable car down from La Flegere rather than Plan Praz (the ticket works for both) & that's the whole TMB done :)
Man what a trip!
in equal parts stunning and tough - the TMB absolutely delivered. Every day we were treated with a gruelling ascent, a toe bashing descent and simply incredible views all the way through. The tour guide and the camp manager were just fabulous too - the guide wasnt just an IML but also a trained biologist clearly deeply in love with Mother nature - to learn a little about the local flora and fauna whilst also feeling completely at ease and secure knowing your guide has your back was just lovely - it meant we could concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other and just enjoy the ride. Our camp manager Vega cooked us some seriously delicious food on only 4 camp stoves - it smelled so good she had random campers coming up to ask what she was cooking! The camps where all lovely - some perhaps a little more loud than others but overall, as far as a camping trip goes, it was pretty darn luxurious. Would do this again in a heartbeat