Chamonix-Mont-Blanc Travel Forum

We will be walking mont blanc classic walk in the last week of august,and am enquiring as to how much clothing we need to take. I understand the daytime temperature can be warm and fine to cold and windy, but how about the refuges and lodges at night, will we be requiring bulks of clothing, or just some thermals and a jumper or two?
Also, I have posted the question before of travelling from there to milan, and like the suggestion of high mountain railway via martigny.Is it possible and practical to also go via cable car from chamonix to italy and bus from there, with a load of luggage, as I would like experience this cable car anyway. If so, aproximately how long would this take and the costs.
thank you very much. This is a fantastic forum.

some thermals and a jumper or two should be enough.
the refuges are generally good at supplying you with extra blankets if it´s cold.

you should also be ready for potential bad weather during daytime.
it will probaply mostly be nice and sunny, but weather changes very fast in the alps and you could easily find yourself in a rainstorm and close to minus degrees even in the high summer when you trek over the high passes.

I more than agree with the previous answer. In high mountains, the weather can change from nice and warm to windy and drizzling in a matter of a quarter an hour. The second part of August is often a period of silly weather, almost unpredictable. Snow falls are not uncommon on this walk at any period and even more at the end of August. For your walk, you must be prepared more to cold, wind and rain/snow than to heat: it is always possible to remove one or two layers of clothing but if you have not taken enough, you will be in great trouble. Even if this walk is so popular that in some places there is almost a queue, you might lose the track and spend more time in the open than expected.

Do not worry about clothing in the refuges. If you have enough at day time, you will have enough at night. But, as I said, this tour is very popular and some refuges might be packed when you arrive. You will have to walk to the next one, which might induce you to walk in the late evening (enough clothing!)

I doubt that it will be possible to bring load of luggage on the Aiguille du Midi cable car. You will have to leave your belongings in Chamonix and come back to take them.

About travelling to Chamonix, there are buses from Milan. The timetable is in this webpage: http://www.regione.vda.it/trasporti/orariolinea_i.asp?codlinea=28

I have done the Tour du Mont Blanc quite a few times and suggest taking as little weight as possible, in other words not duplicates of clothing for a certain purpose as it's not a fashion show even in the huts at night. Take a very warm layer for cold weather as mentioned. Take rain gear. Do not take 2 or 3 jumpers! Take one or two light weight base layer items, a mid layer long sleeved top and a warm fleece. Bring one extra mid layer shirt for wearing in the huts so you don't stink at dinner. Wash out any stinky clothes on the way if the weather is nice, or use merino wool rather than synthetics for your warm layers to minimize need to wash. Bring waterproof breathable trousers and a single layer lightweight water proof breathable jacket. This doubles as windbreaker over the warm fleece, and rain gear. For trousers one pair if they have unzippable legs are good and perhaps a pair of shorts or leggings for in the hut so you can wash out very muddy trouser legs. Bring 2-3 pairs of socks (which you will wash out but which often take more than 1 day to fully dry) and enough underwear however!

Also recommend a warm hat, fleece neckwarmer and light fleece or windstopper gloves as well. The refuges all have woolen blankets and wood stoves. Bring a sleeping bag liner (silk if possible) to sleep in on top of the sheets and do not forget a head lamp!

It has snowed and sleeted at this time of year and there have been heat waves (resurgence of hottest parts of summer) at this time of year. Also be aware that the last weekend of August is the North Face Ultra Trail race ... you may want to avoid the trails at this time as you will be run down by literally thousands of trail runners. Also realize that weather forecasts in the mountains are only accurate about 1-2 days out ... so do not count on the forecast on the day of departure to be good for the entire length of the walk.

If you take the Helbronner lift from Entreves Italy over to Chamonix I would suggest doing it only with back packs and not rolling type luggage. You have stairways to negotiate but there is no technical reason you cannot take luggage up this lift and down again. It is a matter of how much pfaffing you want to do. The lifts are used by tourists and I am sure they do not appreciate a person with 5 pieces of luggage, but they are quite used to mountaineers coming up with very large backpacks full of gear, so use your judgement.

The total ride time would be over an hour as you will take 3 lifts up, 1 lift across and 2 lifts down to Chamonix. Add time onto that if you actually want to make use of the very high lift fares and get out at the viewing stations and look around and take photos of the mountains (all of which have stair cases to access different platforms so I would not recommend it with lots of bags in tow as you will quickly feel irritated at dragging the gear everywhere you want to have a look). It is not always open to cross the glacier on the Helbronner lift (weather dependent on the cross wind speed) so be sure to know the bus schedules to Chamonix 'just in case'.

thank you for the excellant information. Makes my packing and organising a lot easier.

Hi,

I also found this OHM page which might be useful for your planning. As mentioned by someone else the huts can be crowded in August, but if you call ahead and book your space then you will have a guaranteed place up to a certain time of day. If you are going to be late enough to miss dinner time or will miss your reservation entirely due to a calculation error about how fast you would travel, call the hut so they can either take on more people or save your place. Store their numbers in your phone before you start the walk (some areas won't have reception but many areas of the walk do). The page with all the hut numbers for the Tour du Mont Blanc is maintained by the Office of Haute Montagne in Chamonix and is here : http://www.ohm-chamonix.com/fiche.php?id=62&liste=tmb&ling=En

Have fun!

thank you, nice to have such an informative and thorough answer.