SIX DAY PROGRAM
How can people often with no experience climb Mont Blanc in only six days? It’s totally achievable if you are fit enough, but six days is only a minimum amnt of time to acclimatise for Mont Blanc so you’ll still need as many other factors in your favour as possible. Our ascent program is the result of 19 years and 4500+ clients on Mont Blanc, we’ve climbed this mountain every which way over the years and have now settled on what we think is the best possible Mont Blanc ascent program.
Booking the various huts on Mont Blanc is extremely competitive which means that the program for the week will not always be the same; we use different combinations of huts to get to the summit but you will always have two nights and therefore two possible summit days reserved for you (see Huts and Routes). You will however need to follow our Fitness Guidelines carefully in order to be able to comfortably summit via any route, even in marginal conditions.
And if despite every effort conditions are so bad it’s not even worth trying Mont Blanc? We’ll go pretty much anywhere in the alps to fill your week with exciting mountaineering (no extra cost, see this FAQ). Click on the diagram below to see the basic program for each day:
DAY 3
DESCEND TO CHALET, ROCK SCRAMBLING TRAINING
An important recovery day after yesterday’s big effort on Gran Paradiso. After a late breakfast by alpine standards (7am) there’s a leisurely descent in the morning sunshine through the stunning Gran Paradiso National Park. The guide may decide to do some rock scrambling training on the way down or when we get back to Chamonix, but either way we’ll stop for an obligatory cappuccino and ice cream before leaving Italy.
Though it’s an easy day we do have some important decisions to make as it’s the last day we can exercise our limited flexibility with the Mont Blanc hut reservations we’ve already made. An example of this would be if a day 5 ascent was looking doubtful but the weather was better for day 6, we might choose to cancel our day 4 evening reservation so as not to have to sit around in the hut all day. We could do this at this stage, but any later and we’d risk upsetting the guardian which is something best avoided.
We normally get back to the chalet around 2pm which gives you some time to prepare for the Mont Blanc trip starting tomorrow. Any problems with boots or any other items of kit can be sorted out at this point, and you’ll have dinner at the chalet as on the first evening.