Aiguille-Noire - Courmayeur - Rifugio Bertone - Rifugio Bonatti - Chalet Val Ferret - Rifugio Elena
- Distance: 20km
- Duration: (with breaks): 9h 00min
- Elevation gain/loss: 1300m/520m
Next morning we took a bus to the centre of Courmayeur and no, I do not feel guilty about it 🙂 it saved us at least one hour of uneventful walk between the towns and I preferred to spend that extra hour admiring the mountains.
After stocking up for lunch in a local supermarket (fresh baguette!) we headed towards Rifugio Bertone. We actually kind of rushed up the mountain to make it there before 11:00 because I wanted my cappuccino! And I got it. True Italian cappuccino, the best.
From Rifugio Bertone there is an option to take a higher variante path and I’ve heard it’s very beautiful. We debated for quite a while whether we should do it, but finally decided to play it safe and take the lower path (the original stage) as we were again combining two stages in one day. If your day destination is Rifugio Bonatti, the higher variante might be a very doable option.
Even though we took a lower path option, it was such a spectacular landscape. Mountains, glaciers, rivers and this other awesome stuff that is completely normal in the Alps. Val Veni is definitely one of the highlights of TMB, so I took my time to appreciate the views with numerous breaks.
The path is also very pleasant, making it easy to enjoy the views. We stopped in Rifugio Bonatti (2025m) for lunch and another mountain staring break. I would have loved to stay there for a night as the views were just wonderful, but we had another refuge in our itinerary – Rifugio Elena (2062m). Besides additional few hours of hiking we also were aware of dark clouds brewing behind us. It’s time to speed up.
Well, the dark clouds caught up with us quite easily and while descending from Rifugio Bonatti we got caught by a rather heavy rain. We got lucky though as we were close to Chalet Val Ferret which ended being our shelter from the rain. We could sit inside nice and warm, sipping an absolutely compulsory hot chocolate.
Thankfully the rain stopped after ~45mins and we pressed on. A bit more than an hour of uphill hiking was left and I was snailing towards the hut. I was getting tired of full day Alpine ups and downs. This last hill felt pretty tough on me. Oh, how relieved I was when we finally reached it. Done!
Today we finally got to experience what it is like to stay in a mountain hut. Staying in a huge room with +30 fellow hikers, sleeping in a bunk bed and having a hearty dinner with everyone – that’s how it was.
The best part was the view from the refuge, which was literally next to a stunning Glacier de Pre de Bar. I even went for a small photography exploration down the refuge. It was awesome to carry only my body weight without the extra 10kg on my back.
By now you probably noticed that we are diverting from the original stages of TMB. Few reasons for that:
- When we started planning this awesome trip (early April), we could only get 1 (I know!) refuge, which made us change our plans, get a tent and plan the itinerary where we can camp. Wild camping was not really an option for us yet as we had very little camping experience before this trip and hesitated to go “all in” camping. We decided to stay in designated campgrounds which were quite scarce on TMB, leaving us very little choice in terms of where to sleep.
- We learned from other blogs that it is quite popular to combine a few stages and so if you’re fit, you can shorten the whole trip. I agree with that. While being quite fit hikers, we found it completely doable to combine a few stages. It is perfectly fine to follow the original itinerary if you have time and luck with locations. That way you’ll have free afternoons to chill in the refuge or do more alternative hikes.
Day 4 tips
- In case you cannot get Rifugio Elena and you're scared of Italian fines for wild camping, push to the border - Grand Col Ferret. Swiss allow wild camping above the tree line.