SO – THE HIKE! The Tour Du Mont Blanc was, without a doubt – the most beautiful hike I’ve ever been on. (And I’ve been on a few haha). There were mountains, rivers, lakes, beautiful huts and best of all it was FULL of lovely people. I’ve never met more kind, friendly and warm people on a hiking trail before. On Day 6 of the Hike my brother was struggling with a blister on the back of a heel and while we were getting him com-pied up (bandaged up) I’m not kidding we were ask over 8 times if we had everything we needed by the 20 people that walked past us. There’s a proper community on this trail, especially as everyone generally walks in the same direction – so over multiple days you start to run into friends you’ve made earlier on in the trip and suddenly it feels like a proper moving town as you walk.
I came out to Chamonix with my JUST my brother originally and it was our plan to hike it just us two, but by Day two we were already walking with two other American Women. One of them stayed with us for half of the trek and became a good friend of ours! The other dipped in and out at her own pace and joined me for the last couple of days of the hike, we had others hike with us for short periods of time and we met some of the funniest Canadian pensioners ever hahaha – sorry I’m rambling here. But what I’m trying to say is – there’s a ton of cool friendly people on this trail. And it’s easy to make friends!
We met people of all different ages, sizes and abilities. People were doing the whole thing in 5 days while others were doing it in two weeks! There’s so many huts along this trail, so many places to stop for a coffee and a cake and to refill a water bottle or reapply suncream (lol that was me every few hours #Irishdecent.
We took 7 days of hiking total and actually booked everything through a touring company called AdventureBase.com I climbed up Mont Blanc with them last year and they did a banging job then, so I thought it was only right again to use them for this trip. (There’s a discount code in my vids description for their trips SITE WIDE)
GEAR: So as you’ll have seen I hiked this trail in yes – TRAIL RUNNING SHOES. NO, NOPE – not TENIS shoes. TRAIL RUNNING SHOES PEOPLE. Hahaha, people always give me grief about them – but guys it was 100% the right choice for this trip. Boots are too clunky and heavy for me, me and my bro both wore these specific New Balance trail runners – https://amzn.to/3iehCaV
Fair play If your ankles can’t hack the miles without the support of boots – I do feel that. But we just made sure we did plenty of running and hiking ahead of our trip so that we wouldn’t run into TOO many injury issues. THAT SAID – my bro did suffer with his knees (as you may have seen in the video). SO I’d recommend to everyone to look up Chase Mountains on Youtube and try to follow his various guides on strengthening knees and ankles. Because of my YT channel I do a fair bit of this so I was basically fine, but TBH I should have even done some of the knee stuff.
As for other general advice – I’d recommend packing as light as possible, to make sure you bring hiking poles because they’ll save you like 20% of energy on every step you take! Which adds up to a lot when your hiking a long thru-hike like this. For navigation: We used All trails to navigate, the food from the huts was passable – not always amazing – but enough to keep you going. There’s plenty of places for water and for beers along the hike so no worries there eight.
And for the camera people viewing this: I shot these images on my Sony A7sii, a goPro Hero 8 and a iPhone. And I know they’re super saturated lol, but IDC this is how I picture the hikes post trip in my head – so this is how I edit the pics hahaha. Also give me some credit – they’re screenshots from a VIDEO, not actual photos!
If your curious about any of my other camera or hiking equipment – again please checkout the video I made about the experience – in the description of that video is a ton of links to all the stuff I use and recommend! 🙂 Sorry for the rushed message. https://youtu.be/-dty9SPg2aE
FINAL ADVICE WOULD BE TO:
Buy sock liners! They are my utter sure fire secret to avoiding blisters, just search them on Amazon and all kinds will come up! I currently rock these, because they’re cheap and good quality: https://amzn.to/3oqXDaP
Bien fait les gars et belles photos
Looks stunning!
And they did it in fucking sneakers!
what a beautiful view!
Bravo !
Great photos. Nice trek for sure.
First thing I notice as a swiss: wrong shoes for the trip.
There are different boot types and for this a flexible light one would probably be sufficient, though I prefer hard alpine boots (modern ones).
I did this hike a few years ago with my dad and sister! It was a really cool experience, and your photos look fantastic. 🙂
9 comments
SO – THE HIKE! The Tour Du Mont Blanc was, without a doubt – the most beautiful hike I’ve ever been on. (And I’ve been on a few haha). There were mountains, rivers, lakes, beautiful huts and best of all it was FULL of lovely people. I’ve never met more kind, friendly and warm people on a hiking trail before. On Day 6 of the Hike my brother was struggling with a blister on the back of a heel and while we were getting him com-pied up (bandaged up) I’m not kidding we were ask over 8 times if we had everything we needed by the 20 people that walked past us. There’s a proper community on this trail, especially as everyone generally walks in the same direction – so over multiple days you start to run into friends you’ve made earlier on in the trip and suddenly it feels like a proper moving town as you walk.
I came out to Chamonix with my JUST my brother originally and it was our plan to hike it just us two, but by Day two we were already walking with two other American Women. One of them stayed with us for half of the trek and became a good friend of ours! The other dipped in and out at her own pace and joined me for the last couple of days of the hike, we had others hike with us for short periods of time and we met some of the funniest Canadian pensioners ever hahaha – sorry I’m rambling here. But what I’m trying to say is – there’s a ton of cool friendly people on this trail. And it’s easy to make friends!
We met people of all different ages, sizes and abilities. People were doing the whole thing in 5 days while others were doing it in two weeks! There’s so many huts along this trail, so many places to stop for a coffee and a cake and to refill a water bottle or reapply suncream (lol that was me every few hours #Irishdecent.
We took 7 days of hiking total and actually booked everything through a touring company called AdventureBase.com I climbed up Mont Blanc with them last year and they did a banging job then, so I thought it was only right again to use them for this trip. (There’s a discount code in my vids description for their trips SITE WIDE)
GEAR: So as you’ll have seen I hiked this trail in yes – TRAIL RUNNING SHOES. NO, NOPE – not TENIS shoes. TRAIL RUNNING SHOES PEOPLE. Hahaha, people always give me grief about them – but guys it was 100% the right choice for this trip. Boots are too clunky and heavy for me, me and my bro both wore these specific New Balance trail runners – https://amzn.to/3iehCaV
Fair play If your ankles can’t hack the miles without the support of boots – I do feel that. But we just made sure we did plenty of running and hiking ahead of our trip so that we wouldn’t run into TOO many injury issues. THAT SAID – my bro did suffer with his knees (as you may have seen in the video). SO I’d recommend to everyone to look up Chase Mountains on Youtube and try to follow his various guides on strengthening knees and ankles. Because of my YT channel I do a fair bit of this so I was basically fine, but TBH I should have even done some of the knee stuff.
As for other general advice – I’d recommend packing as light as possible, to make sure you bring hiking poles because they’ll save you like 20% of energy on every step you take! Which adds up to a lot when your hiking a long thru-hike like this. For navigation: We used All trails to navigate, the food from the huts was passable – not always amazing – but enough to keep you going. There’s plenty of places for water and for beers along the hike so no worries there eight.
And for the camera people viewing this: I shot these images on my Sony A7sii, a goPro Hero 8 and a iPhone. And I know they’re super saturated lol, but IDC this is how I picture the hikes post trip in my head – so this is how I edit the pics hahaha. Also give me some credit – they’re screenshots from a VIDEO, not actual photos!
If your curious about any of my other camera or hiking equipment – again please checkout the video I made about the experience – in the description of that video is a ton of links to all the stuff I use and recommend! 🙂 Sorry for the rushed message.
https://youtu.be/-dty9SPg2aE
FINAL ADVICE WOULD BE TO:
Buy sock liners! They are my utter sure fire secret to avoiding blisters, just search them on Amazon and all kinds will come up! I currently rock these, because they’re cheap and good quality: https://amzn.to/3oqXDaP
Bien fait les gars et belles photos
Looks stunning!
And they did it in fucking sneakers!
what a beautiful view!
Bravo !
Great photos. Nice trek for sure.
First thing I notice as a swiss: wrong shoes for the trip.
There are different boot types and for this a flexible light one would probably be sufficient, though I prefer hard alpine boots (modern ones).
I did this hike a few years ago with my dad and sister! It was a really cool experience, and your photos look fantastic. 🙂
100 miles = 160.9 km