TMB Days 5 & 6: Refuge de la Balme to La Ville des Glaciers - July 24th to 25th, 2025
The Tour du Mont Blanc (TMB) is a 165 kilometer (103 mile) hiking trail which encircles Mont Blanc, the highest peak in the Western Europe, through France, Italy, and Switzerland. Our original plan was to complete the hike in 21 days, but we extended it to 22 days before we even started, because Ann was recovering from a bad cold. This post covers days 5 and 6 on the trail, from Refuge de la Balme to La Ville des Glaciers, with an overnight stay at Refuge de la Croix du Bonhomme, all in France.
Thursday, Day 5 of the TMB, was our shortest distance of hiking yet, but it was a long, steep climb. Breakfast at Refuge de la Balme was simple, but hearty. It was yogurt, muesli, bread, butter, jam, apple juice, coffee, and tea. Breakfast started at 7 am.
For some reason, Ann’s phone had completely drained overnight. The only thing we can think of is that it was trying to search for a cell signal all night. So, in the morning, we plugged it in and waited for it to get mostly charged before we left. That meant that we were one of the last people to leave the refuge that morning. It was close to 9 am by the time we hit the trail. However, while most people started off in the rain that morning, we got to start after the rain stopped.
The trail was slow going. Ann still had her cough and her energy was getting low by the end of the day’s climb. The views came and went as the clouds rolled through. When we reached Col du Bonhomme (a mountain pass), it was totally fogged in.
We had our picnic lunch from Refuge du Balme, so we ducked inside a little shelter at Col du Bonhomme to eat our lunch out of the wind. It wasn’t all that windy, but it was cold. Our lunch consisted of couscous with vegetables, bread, cheese, hard-boiled egg, and a cookie. It was pretty tasty.
By the time we finished eating, the clouds had parted, and we had some nice views of our surroundings. It pays to linger.
You would think that the trail would start to head back down after a mountain pass, but not this time. From the pass, it turned and continued to climb. By the time we reached Refuge de la Croix du Bonhomme, we had gone 6.3 kilometers (3.9 miles) with an elevation gain of 793 meters (2602 feet), and only a 66 meter (217 foot) elevation loss. We counted it as hike number 32 of our 52 Hike Challenge for 2025.
We reached the refuge around 1:15 pm. They let us check in, but wouldn’t let us up to the room until 3 pm. There was a large room in the basement for backpacks, poles, and shoes. As usual, no food was allowed in the rooms. There was a large plastic crate to put your backpack in and a small crate to carry up the gear you needed for the night. Again, there were crocs you could borrow. Keith tried the crocs this time, but didn’t find them comfortable, so he switched back to his shower shoes.
There were toilets outside. They were the same kind we had seen the day before, with a conveyor belt that you worked with a foot pump. These had a sign explaining how they worked. Just as we suspected, they separate out the urine and compost the rest.
There were showers, but they cost extra, something like four euros for four minutes. However, there was no guarantee that the water was hot, as it is solar heated and it had been cloudy all day. So we opted not to take showers. Ann just used a wet bandana to wipe her body down and put on her dry, but dirty hiking clothes from the day before along with her leggings. She hung out her damp hiking clothes to dry.
We had a lot of time to kill until dinner, which was at 6:30 pm. Ann couldn’t do much on her laptop, as the battery was pretty low. Again, there was only one outlet bank for everyone to use. We just used that to charge our watches and phones. We turned off our phones that night to make sure they wouldn’t drain the battery. There was no cell service at the refuge and no wifi.
When we finally were allowed up to our room, we were thankful to see there were indoor restrooms, one for men and one for women with four toilets each, in addition to the showers. However, there was only one small sink in each of the restrooms, for about 100 hikers to share to brush their teeth.
It was cold outside, in the single digits Celsius (40’s Fahrenheit), so sitting outside wasn’t really comfortable. Thank goodness there was enough room in the restaurant inside for everyone to hang out. There was a wall of windows around three sides, but, unfortunately, there weren’t any views most of the time, since we were socked in by fog.
Refuge de la Croix du Bonhomme is remote, so there was a helicopter pad for their supplies to be flown in. It looked like the place was heated by wood, as there were large helicopter bags full of chopped wood. There was a wood stove in the dining room/restaurant area, which they lit before dinner.
Tables were assigned for dinner. It consisted of lentil soup, bread, and cheese, followed by a pasta dish with bacon, cheese, and carrots. The pasta was shaped in small cubes. We’ve never seen pasta that shape before. For dessert, there was a light chocolate cake. Again, the food was served family style, so you were welcome to take as much as you wanted. The food was OK, but not our favorite meal.
We found the noise level in the dining room rather high, with about 100 people talking. It was a little hard for us to carry on a conversation at our table. There was a couple of women from Taiwan who were doing the TMB in 13 days and a French couple who were not doing the TMB, but a route from Switzerland to Nice.
After dinner, we settled up our bill. We had to pay cash because their satellite connection was not working. We were warned about that, so we had saved enough cash.
We then got ready for bed. Our set of bunk beds was in the dorm room, along with 22 others. Luckily, we had one of the sets of bunk beds that were by themselves, instead of being part of a bank of five bunk beds. There were also other shared rooms with fewer people in them, but we were unable to reserve one of those.
The door to the room stairwell and the room to the dorm insulated sound pretty well; however, one and/or the other door was being opened about every minute, as the 100 people moved around. The dining room/restaurant stayed pretty noisy until 10 pm. It sounded like there was some live folk music being played down there, but we didn’t go back down to investigate. Keith tried sleeping with his earplugs. He didn’t think they did much good and he didn’t find them comfortable, so he put them away.
Ann slept in her hiking clothes and leggings again. Just like the night before, she started out using the duvet, but was only using her sleeping bag liner by morning. The 24 bodies in one room seemed to warm the place up. Again, the bed was a little too firm for Ann and her hips were aching by morning. But she managed to get 7 hours of sleep that night, according to her watch.
Friday, TMB Day 6, didn’t go exactly to plan, but it could have been worse. We were concerned about how the day would go. Just a day or two before, we learn that the Tour de France was going near the TMB and through Bourg-Saint-Maurice, the town where we had a hotel reservation. In order to get to our hotel, we needed to take a shuttle bus from Les Chapieux. However, from what we could tell, the road would be closed most of the day for the Tour de France. So we weren’t sure if the shuttle bus would be running. We tried contacting the tourist information center, but we didn’t get a response before we lost cell service. Just to be safe, we ordered an Uber for 7 pm on Friday, knowing that the road was closed until 5 pm. However, before we lost cell service, no one had accepted the ride yet.
Breakfast at Refuge de la Croix du Bonhomme was simple. There was muesli, but no yogurt, only hot milk. About the only other thing to eat was bread, butter, jam, and honey, along with tea and coffee, no juice. Breakfast started at 6:30 am and ran until 7:30 am. We took our time getting ready. Again, we were the last ones to leave in the morning, hitting the trail about 8 am.
As we were packing up, we noticed a mule out front. It looked like a guided hiking group was using a pack mule to haul their gear.
The advantage of being the last hikers to leave the refuge, was that we had the trail to ourselves. It was peaceful and quiet. We could hear the sound of the water trickling down the small streams, which seemed to cover the mountain sides. The trail was a steady climb down to Les Chapieux, but the trail was mostly dirt with only a few really steep sections.
As we got lower, we could hear the bells from herds of cows and sheep. We heard the distinctive whistle from a lot of marmots, but, somehow, we couldn’t see them. They must have been hiding between the rocks. They seemed to be much more vocal than the marmots we encounter in the western United States.
We reached Les Chapieux around 11 am. We headed straight to the tourist information office to find out whether we could get to our hotel that evening. They confirmed that the road would be closed until 5 pm. But there would be three shuttles running, starting at 5:20 pm. The ticket machine for the shuttles was just outside the tourist office.
There isn’t much in Les Chapieux, but there is a restaurant in the Refuge Auberge de la Nova along with a mini market. We tried to sit down at de la Nova to eat an early lunch. However, we were informed that they don’t start serving food until noon.
So instead, we went over to the mini market and got a couple of mini pizzas. They heated them up for us and they weren’t too bad.
Our plan was to continue hiking up to La Ville des Glaciers and take a shuttle back to Les Chapieux. Before we left Les Chapieux, we went ahead and bought our tickets to and from Bourg-Saint-Maurice. You had to pick a time, so we picked the 5:50 pm shuttle that evening, with a return shuttle at 8:10 am the following morning. We thought we could eat something in Les Chapieux before taking the shuttle to Bourg-Saint-Maurice. We also bought the Les Chapieux to La Ville des Glaciers ticket for 8:45 am the following morning as well, just to make sure we didn’t wasted any time waiting for an available shuttle. However, the shuttles between Les Chapiex and La Ville des Glaciers run much more often.
It took us a little over two hours to reach La Ville des Glaciers. Not far from the shuttle stop is Vente Beufort Cheese. We poked our heads around the place a little bit, but couldn’t find anyone to know what we could see there. However, as we were waiting for a shuttle, a guided hiking group with a pack mule showed up.
Their guide took them into the cheese place, so we tagged along. We wanted to buy some cheese. We tried to communicate with the man who looked like the owner. We asked if he spoke English. He answered “non” and then walked away. So we’re not sure what the set up is if you want to see the operation or buy some cheese. You may need to speak French or have someone with you who does so that you can found out more information.
We hopped on the 2 pm shuttle back to Les Chapieux. Since we didn’t know which shuttle we would be catching back, we didn’t purchase our ticket from the ticket machine before we left Les Chapieux, but bought the tickets in cash from the shuttle driver.
It was 2:30 pm by the time we tried Refuge Auberge de la Nova again. Sorry, the kitchen was closed. So the kitchen was only open from noon to 2 pm? Bummer! Ann was looking forward to eating a hamburger and fries. She normally doesn’t eat many burgers, but it sounded really good that day. So instead, we headed back to the mini market and split a large bag of potato chips.
We learned that the Tour de France was expected to come through around 4:15 pm and the walk over to the road was only about one kilometer (0.8 miles). So we decided to walk over and watch the cyclists ride by. It was amazing how many vehicles are associated with the race.
There was a pretty steady stream of vehicles related to the race going by for a couple of hours before the cyclists showed up. By the time they reached us, it had started raining. But we stayed to watch them all go by.
After the race, we walked back to Les Chapieux in the rain. We took shelter in the overhang of the tourist information center as we waited over an hour for our shuttle bus. We wish we would have picked the 5:20 pm bus instead of the 5:50 pm. Not only would that have gotten us to town sooner, it would have allowed us to cancel the Uber we ordered. There was no cell service in Les Chapieux, so we had to wait until we were almost to Bourg-Saint-Maurice before we could cancel the Uber. Since it was less than an hour before our scheduled Uber pick up time, we had to pay for half of it. Oh well, the price of the Uber was worth the peace of mind it gave us knowing we wouldn’t be stranded in Les Chapieux.
Our total hiking for the day, ending in La Ville des Glaciers, was 11.6 kilometers (7.2 miles) with an elevation gain of 359 meters (1178 feet) and an elevation loss of 964 meters (3166 feet). We completed it in five and a half hours, including the time we spent in Les Chapieux the first time. It was hike number 33 of our 52 Hike Challenge for 2025.
It was 6:30 pm by the time we checked into our hotel in Bourg-Saint-Maurice, the L’Angival. The hotel was about a 15 minute walk from the shuttle stop in town. We decided to opt for the breakfast since it was a buffet that started at 7 am and our shuttle bus time wasn’t until 8:20 am.
Even though we were hungry, we opted not to go out to a restaurant for dinner. There was even a restaurant in the hotel. However, we wanted to make sure we had time to take showers, wash our clothes, get caught up on our emails, and offload our photo and video footage while still getting to bed early. So we just ate trail food for dinner which consisted of beef sticks, cashews, and cereal bars. Another disappointing meal for the day.
Despite the day not going to plan, we couldn’t really complain. We had spent two more days hiking on the TMB, surrounded by stunning mountain scenery, and we had a comfortable place to sleep for the night. Now we rested, so we would be ready for another day on the trail.
Check out our related video: TMB Days 5 & 6: Refuge de la Balme to La Ville des Glaciers
(Ann)