Don’t quite know where to post this non-skiing related question so here goes.

My friend wants us to go out in 2 weeks time to do the Tour du Mont Blanc (2nd week of June). I’m telling him it will still be covered in snow this year and a waste of time… Can anyone give me more insightful information than my pessimistic guess. It’s a few months since I was last in Chamonix but I just know there is a big base to melt through!

Thanks

Indeed, if you were planning on walking dry mountain trails as you find them in the summer, you’re way too early. Tour du Mont Blanc is doable in June, but there will be lots of snow above 2000 meters. Here’s a look at a webcam from Les Contamines which is close to Col du Bonhomme (part of TDMB). The ridge on the right as at around 2200m:

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indeed, there’s plenty of good walking in the alps in early June but a lot of multiday tours are difficult with the amount of snow about. That’s normal and it’s why a lot of huts aren’t fully operational until late June. If you’re prepared to do day tours and prepared to turn around when conditions get too hard you can have a good trip. It’s one of the most interesting times to be here in the alps for flowers and wildlife. I get out three or four days a week at the moment and I only get where I’m headed about half the time but the mountains are empty and teeming with wild life so it’s great.

Well ise that sounds positive, I’m sure short treks perhaps with an overnight camp or stay in an unmanned hut would give us the fix we need and the wildlife is very appealing as it’s all too often masked by the crowds in this part of the Alps.

Can you recommend any routes or areas which you have frequented on your recent walks and know to be in reasonable condition?

Thanks

This year there is still a lot of snow above 2000m and snow down to 1800m in places. The problem for walkers is that too early in the day and you really need to have crampons but once the snow softens enough to be safe to climb with boots it can be pretty strenous and you can end up with a lot of snow in your boots (and wet feet). I think the Tour de Mont Blanc is ambitous at the moment (although maybe with snowshoes it would be more feasible).

The good thing about the Haute-Savoie is that much of it is not that high, so the sunny side of the Grand Bargy and the Chablais should be snow free to around 2500m.

it would be pretty poor with snowshoes I think, the problem is you get some complex layers even on flatter ground and you tend to crash through them, invariably the shoe dives forward and you’re stuck in place.

Here’s some bozo who’s just done exactly that fortunately captured by an amused bystander on camera:

just about to dig himself out ..

in answer to where’s good… anywhere really, by early June you’re expecting below 2000m to be mostly OK but you’re going to want to avoid exposure to steeper slopes above if they’re still holding snow. I was in the Vanoise a few weeks back and it was pretty great, some of those huts will be open in June. You’d not generally expect to do the glacier tour until a couple of weeks later but it might go.

Or, take a bike and try the Jura, entirely snow free and pretty good mountain biking. All the pre-alpes is pretty much snow free now and will be nearly totally by mid-June.

Or.. grab a cheap flight to somewhere else, Morocco will be fantastic, not too warm yet, I’m thinking of Crete or Sardinia personally but Kosovo looks interesting. Corsica would be good but even the GR20 is likely to have snow until late June.

There was a lot of snow in Corsica again this year at altitude, I wonder if some of the north facing bits of the GR20 will still be snow bound in June… you know the route well, do you think this could pose problems?

The Balkans sound like a good plan, I will have to keep an eye on http://snowslider.net/

There’s a couple of variants you’d probably give a miss, Brèche de Capitello most notably and side trips like Monte Cinto maybe. But it is an island in the med’, it does get pretty warm. Still early June is early for the GR20, I’m not sure if all the refuges are open until mid June at least.

Your friends will be pleased not to be doing the Tour de Mont Blanc at the moment, we’ve had very poor mountain weather the last couple of weeks and some fresh snow at altitude.

It’s terrible! Where’s the summer??? They are saying to expect snow below 2000 meters on Saturday and Sunday!

It is beginning to look worrying for anyone involved in tourism !

Is the poor start to summer related to the Icelandic Volcano?

I was in Vanoise for a few days, oddly enough I was the only person in the refuges

Snow making it hard going anywhere above 2300-2400m :