A 100 mile hike in the Alps you need to do before you die #tourdumontblanc #backpacking #hiking

A 100 mile hike in the Alps you need to do before you die #tourdumontblanc #backpacking #hiking

There’s a 100mile backpacking trail through France, Switzerland, and Italy where you can sleep in mountain refuges and eat home-cooked meals every night. And it was one of the best trips we have ever done. This is what it’s like. This trail is called the Tortoont Blanc and it’s a giant loop that starts near Shaman, France that we backpacked over 8 days. You can do this trip guided, but we booked the whole thing ourselves and managed to piece together seven places to sleep along the route and spent three nights in France, two in Switzerland, and two in Italy. Every day we’d hike anywhere from 10 to 24 miles. But the real kicker on the trip is the elevation gain. This trail ends up gaining over 30,000 ft of elevation, which is more than the total elevation of Everest. I feel like I probably underestimated quite how difficult this trail was going to be, but there are some buses and gondilas you can take to shorten some of the days. What I really love, though, is that some days you’re deep in the mountains hiking next to glaciers, and the next you’re strolling through towns, grabbing fresh pastries, stopping for coffees, or having a three course meal for lunch. Every refuge we stayed at was a little bit different. Sometimes we had a room to ourselves, and others we got very close to strangers. But each had its own charm and the most insane views. And they fed us dinners and breakfast, which made our packs pretty light, only having to carry a few snacks. I really didn’t know what to expect for this trip, and I was really nervous about navigating a trip like this in a new place, but it ended up being one of our favorite trips to date.