Mont Blanc 2024

One of my goals for this year was to climb the Mont Blanc: the highest mountain in Europe*... and I did it! 

I thought some people might be interested in hearing about it to plan their own trip. 

Preparation

The first thing to note is that you have to book a year in advance. It's a very popular thing to do and the "cabanes"  (or huts) fill up quicky. You can try to book by yourself or work with a alpine guide but from what I've heard, it's much harder to get a spot. The safest way is to go with one of the larger agencies that just bulk book beds in order to resell them later (I used Mountain Expedition and was pretty happy - although you can get a slightly cheaper deal on Decathlon Travel I believe). 

I booked a 6 day trip: 3 prep days, and 3 "Mont Blanc" days although in hinsight, the prep days wheren't that necessary (one day is enough to get to learn how to use Alpine gear). 

What I can recommend though is to do a few 4-6h hikes in the months before (ideally 2-3k meters above sea levels) to get used to that kind of physical effort. (also, a big part of the Mont-Blanc is "via-ferrata" style climbing, so strong arms are highly recommended, but I'll get back to that). 

Arriving in Chamonix

Upon arriving in Chamonix (the town below the Mont-Blanc), it become clear we had all packed far too much (the guides had 30 liter bags whereas some of us had 50-60 liter bags, with an average of 40 liters). 

With contructive feedback from the guide (^^), we got rid of some stuff and only kept the basics:

• plastic bottles instead of glass/metal ones
• only minimal replacement underwear
• no big winter/ski jackets or trousers (but ski sunglasses! they're essential if the weather gets bad)
• food / snacks
• climbing gear
• ...

then we did our three days of prep (nothing super interesting to say there: basically a big warm up).

Getting to the "Tete Rousse" refuge - Day 1

You wake up relatively late, around 8am (those mounteneers are crazy and usually wake up at 2-3am) and get on a train (only three trains a day). From there on you hike for 3-4 hours. Nothing too difficult. We had a nice cloudy weather, not too hot, not too cold.

We arrived around 3pm at the refuge and were told to relax, sleep a bit and get ready for dinner (highly recommend an afternoon nap). 

We had dinner around 7pm and all went to bed around 9pm. There was a dramatic sunset + accident a few hundred meters away from our hut by people who had decided to climb the mountain in the evening without guides or proper equipment and slipped down the "Couloir du Gouter" (very bad idea, luckily everyone survived) which got us all pretty nervous but at the end, all fell asleep. 

The big day - Day 2

Waking up a 3am, quick breakfast (bred, jam, tea), putting on our gear and frontal lamps and let's go. The first 3-4h are pretty hard core in the sense that you're pretty much climbing a vertical wall and looking down is quite scary (luckily it's dark so you don't really realise any of it). It's not typical hiking, it's much more like climbing / via-ferrata style.

Then you arrive at the top of the wall with the sunrise, absolutely beautiful.

You're then super close to the reach the Gouter hut (refuge du Gouter) where you do a short break and get rid of anything you won't need for the rest of the hike (toothbrush, helmet, ...). 

Then starts a long but much more relaxing hike in the snow. You keep going for something like 3-4 hours before it gets intense again.

We were super lucky with the weather (if the weather is bad and you can't climb, no refund, nothing, end of the story) until the last hour. Then things took a turn for the worse. 

The last hour of the climb is a bit more stressful, you're on a tight "crête", the slope is rough on both sides so falling really isn't an option and the denivelation is tough again. 

(10m later, this place was super windy, snowy and you saw nothing at all!)

In our case, the wind started to blow really hard, with snow falling and reducing our visibility by a lot. We just tried to keep going, some people in front of us had given up, but we just kept going and made it to the top (saw nothing at all at the top, just a lot of snow - and the only thing we wanted was to get back down to somewhere with less wind).

(we took this picture 200m below the top)

3 hours later, we were back at the refuge du Gouter. So pretty much 12 hours of walking. By that point, many of us had a headache and we all went to sleep a few hours before dinner. 

The next morning, we woke up at a very reasonable (7am) time, had breakfast and started the descent of this wall. That was probably the most nervous few hours of the whole journey because you could hear stones falling around you and we all knew we'd have to go through that "Couloir du Gouter" at the end of our descend and that if stones would fall then, it would be not-exactly-great. If you want to really stress yourself, check out this video.

Luckily, we all made it through without issues at all and arrived in Chamonix again; tired. done. done. 

Key takeaways

• Would I do it again? Probably not. In general I think that the alpine landscape (above 3.5k meters), while beautiful, is just too stressful and dangerous. Not worth it. 
• Don't be silly. We saw helicopters every day coming to rescue unprepared tourists, people who climbed alone or just generally people who did not follow best practices. 
• We got lucky. The weather makes everything, if you're unlucky you can't go up and if the weather changes while you're up there, you might end up wishing you'd stayed down there. 
• Super proud. It's awesome to be able to look at that mountain and say "I was up there". Definitely something I'll take with me for the rest of my days.
• 1.5l bottles cost 9 euros in those huts.

*depending on where Europe ends eastwards.