Tour Du Mont Blanc

See me, feel me, touch me, heal me
See me, feel me, touch me, heal me

Following you, I climb the mountain
I get excitement at your feet”

The WHO

Six days after trekking in the palaces of nature, and completing the “Tour Du Mont Blanc,  young Peter Hayes and ELG celebrated at a WHO concert in Vienna. Our other two hiking buddies, Dan and Brandon, had returned to the states and their jobs.  It was hard to believe that our “Tour du Mont Blanc was over,  following  7 months of training, planning and preparation.

My hiking comrades were all former Marine officers and served in Desert Storm.   Camaraderie and teamwork were excellent during this tour of duty. The scenery was spectacular. The food and drink to die for. The refuges and hotels were charming and alluring. We met and befriended several people from different parts of the planet.

We all flew into Geneva and took  a private shuttle to Chamonix, France, a celebrated resort spotted at the foot of Mont Blanc. Chamonix is viewed as the origination and one of the capitals of mountaineering. Chamonix would be our start and finish points for our Tour. We elected to hike counter-clockwise. The weather was warm. 

The “TMB” is a circuit of a mountain block, covering  France, Italy and Switzerland, a journey of around 170km, depending on the precise route taken, with an accumulated altitude gain and loss of about 33,000 feet.  There are 11 passes to cross as the tour progresses from valley to valley. The trails are steep, often times w/o switchbacks. Our backpacks weighed about 20 pounds each.  We elected not to pay a service to transport them from refuge to refuge (hostel) like all the guided tour groups and many others we met on the trail. We did not make our reservations past the second day and had to combine stages a couple of times because the refuges were full. 

There is far too much to detail, so this will be an abbreviated report. After the TMB I spent five marvelous days in Vienna with Pete in his fabulous bungalow in the City Center, with a side trip to Bratislava, Slovakia. 

 I will, however, provide the ever popular “Men Behaving Badly” after the photos below.