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 6
DESCENT BACK TO VALLEY / ALTERNATIVE SUMMIT DAY
Day 6 could end up being the hardest or the easiest day of the week, depending on the weather. If day 5 weather was good hopefully you made the summit yesterday and all you’ve got to do now is get up late at the hut and cruise down to the valley for tea and cakes. However if you couldn’t climb yesterday then this is your alternative summit day, but it’s a tougher timescale as it’s the last day of the course so you’ve got to make the climb and get all the way down to the valley in the same day.
This is obviously easier starting from Gouter (which we normally do) than starting from Tete Rousse, but having said that, historically perhaps 30% of our successful summits have taken place on the last day starting from Tete Rousse, it’s not excessively harder than doing it on day 5 and we start earlier (1am breakfast!) to give you a clear 12 hours to get back to the train by around 3pm.
All our courses finish officially at 7pm on day 6 and we guarantee you’ll be finished by then, but you’re welcome to stay an extra night with us (no extra charge) if you prefer to catch your flight home in the morning. Though we give you breakfast before you leave there is no evening meal on day 6 so those staying the extra night, which most people seem to do, usually go out together in Chamonix.