The Tour du Mont Blanc: The First Stage Over the Col de Voza

Required Activities

• Start out of Les Houches anticlockwise, the direction almost everyone takes, and set the scale before you climb: 170 kilometres of trail, ten kilometres of ascent added up, eight valleys and three countries, on a route first laid out as a GR in 1951 — and note the three other places people start from, Les Contamines, Courmayeur and Champex, because you will meet all of them coming the other way

• At the Col de Voza, wait for the Mont Blanc tramway to grind through on its way up to the Nid d'Aigle, and work out what else meets here: the GR5 on its way from the North Sea to the Mediterranean, the GR Tour du Mont-Blanc you are on, and the line the Ultra-Trail runners take on their first climb every August — then find the burnt-out shell of the restaurant that stood here until November 2022

• Drop off the col into the Bionnassay valley and cross the torrent, then look back up it: the grey water is coming off five kilometres of glacier on the shaded side of the aiguille de Bionnassay, and the hamlet you walk through takes its name from the same ice

• Finish the day at Les Contamines-Montjoie, out of the Chamonix valley and into the val Montjoie, and look at what is queued up above the village for anyone carrying on — the refuge de Tré-la-Tête and then the Croix du Bonhomme — since this is where a good many walkers choose to begin the whole circuit instead