Day-by-day trail itinerary

Walker's Haute Route: 12-day itinerary

Two halves that have almost nothing in common. The first fourteen kilometres are Chamonix valley floor: river-level path through pine and larch, gravel track, and enough tarmac through Les Praz, Les Tines and Argentière that the day feels like an approach rather than a start. It is busy, level, and never more than a few minutes from a bus stop, a bakery or a station. Past Le Tour the valley runs out and the walking changes completely, onto open grazing and ski-area slopes climbing steadily to Col de Balme at 2191 m, a broad grassy saddle with a refuge on it and the French and Swiss border running through it. The descent is the first proper drop of the route, roughly 900 m on grass and stony path into the flat green floor of the Trient valley. Trient itself is a scatter of chalets round a pink church, and the section carries on past it, turning back up the valley on a rising forest track towards the Trient glacier. Everything from the col onwards is Switzerland: different money, different signposts, different hut culture.