Set the ascent you know you can hold day after day: the tool places your nights on the real accommodation along the GPX track of the loop, then evens out the days. Starting point, direction of travel and bivouac all sit in the advanced settings. Pace and advice are covered in the full article.
Daily elevation budget
what you can back up day after day, not your best ever
+1 200 m/day
Advanced settings
Starting point
Alpine club method: take the longer of the horizontal time and the vertical time (ascent and descent), then add half the other. Leave them alone and these settings just follow your elevation budget.
Length of the loop
12 days
Positions measured on the GPX track of the loop (188.3 km, 11,000 m of ascent: Clavans and Besse sit on it, the Refuge des Mouterres 1.3 km off). Times estimated excluding breaks, alpine club method (details in the advanced settings). Valley campgrounds and hotels are not listed. Bookings and staffing dates: see the GR54 refuges.
Elevation profile, one band per day
Your plan is ready. How would you like to travel?
Good call!
Sorting it out yourself is still the best way to make the loop your own, and the split above is a solid base. Book the refuges early, from spring onwards for July and August. The GPX downloads under the profile, and staffing dates are on the GR54 refuges page. Enjoy the loop!
For our latest notes from the ground (track conditions, refuges, route ideas), leave us your email:
Self-guided trip, turnkey logistics
You walk your own plan and we handle the rest: booking the accommodation on your split (adjusted to what they have free), planning advice and support while you are out there. Leave your details and we'll come back to you with a proposal.
Travelling with a guide
Our guides take small groups onto the GR54 and through the Écrins every summer. Leave your details and we'll send you the next departures.
A July evening at the gîte (guesthouse) in Le Désert-en-Valjouffrey, two tables comparing notes over dinner. One lot is knocking off the GR54 in 8 days and will be gone at first light to link two passes in the one hit. At the next table, a hiker is on day nine with four still to run, and she is heading up to the lakes in the morning before rejoining the track. Same 188 km loop, same 11,000 m of ascent, two completely different treks.
So how many days does the GR54 take? The guidebook answer is a nice round number: 12 days.
The real answer is a lot more personal. It comes down to your daily elevation budget, the number of metres of ascent you can back up day after day:
14 or 15 days with the alpine variants or a rest day
2 to 5 days if you are after one section rather than the whole loop (or running it!)
Two things to get straight before you start counting. First, the seasons are the wrong way round: the GR54 season runs July to September, which is the middle of the Australian winter, so this is a trip you take instead of a snow season, not instead of a summer one. Second, everything is priced in euros, and with the AUD sitting where it usually does, budget on roughly 1.6 to 1.7 Australian dollars to the euro when you are sizing up refuge nights (about 55 to 65 EUR half board is standard).
The French walking federation puts the loop at "about a dozen days". The national park publishes four reference itineraries of its own, from 12 to 15 days:
The four reference starting points, 12 to 15 days
Start
Stated length
Stated distance
Stated ascent
Bourg-d'Oisans
13 days
194 km
+11,950 m
La Chapelle-en-Valgaudemar
12 days
184 km
+11,650 m
La Grave
14 days
186 km
+12,500 m
L'Argentière-la-Bessée (starting from the railway station)
15 days
223 km
+13,500 m
The starting point changes, the loop does not: from Bourg-d'Oisans, La Grave or La Chapelle-en-Valgaudemar it is the same GPX track of 188 km and 11,000 m of ascent. The stated figures differ from line to line because each guidebook folds in its own variants and its own way of measuring. Only L'Argentière-la-Bessée genuinely makes the route longer: the town is not on the loop, so the itinerary adds the link in from the station. That 12 to 15 day spread is about how the days get carved up, not about loops of different lengths. The rest of this article is about narrowing it to your own shape and the leave you can actually get.
The maths that holds up: a GR54 at your own pace
Dividing 188 km by a walking speed gives you a number. It does not give you anything that survives this terrain.
On the GR54 the ascent is what runs the show: 11,000 m of cumulative climbing over 13 passes, the Aup Martin at 2,761 m among them, and every metre of it back down again. If your reference is multi-day bushwalking at home, the distances will feel ordinary and the vertical will not. There is very little flat ground on this loop.
To size your trek, divide 11,000 by the ascent you know you can absorb day after day with a pack on. Not the figure from your best single day out, the one you can back up for a week straight.
1,500 m of ascent per day: 7 to 8 days
1,200 m per day: 9 to 10 days
1,000 m per day: 11 days
850 m per day: 13 days
Doing that sum before you leave is what stops you working out on day four that the plan was too keen, right as the most committing half of the loop comes up.
The division stays an approximation, because it assumes you can stop anywhere. On the ground you sleep where there is a refuge (a mountain hut) or some other accommodation: a village, a campground, a hotel. That is exactly what the planner at the top of the page handles: you put in your elevation budget, it places your nights on the real accommodation along the track, then evens out the days between them.
Finding your daily elevation budget
This figure is your cruising rate: the ascent you can take in a day and back up tomorrow, and again the day after. That distinction changes everything, because on a multi-day trek the tiredness stacks. Soreness peaks 24 to 48 hours after the effort, and a night in a refuge does not repair you the way your own bed does. The day a plan cracks is rarely the first, it is the third or fourth.
Three ways to find yours, from quickest to most reliable:
Work back from a recent walk. Take your biggest day of the past few months, the one you finished with something left in the tank. Knock 20 to 30 % off to allow for a full week on the trot with a multi-day pack, and you have an honest starting figure.
Place yourself by profile. Our article on hiking difficulty levels sets out ranges based on how active you are right now. Caught between two lines, take the lower one: you can always add on the way round, the other direction is far less forgiving.
Test it over three days. If this is your first time on a long multi-day trek, a short itinerary is the best test bench there is, and day three is the one that talks. A weekend based in a refuge in the Écrins, or a three-day round in the Valgaudemar, is enough to take your own measure before you commit a fortnight.
The ground then corrects the maths. The schist descents off the Col de la Vaurze and the Col de Côte Belle get taken step by step, and fixed-cable sections do not get rushed.
A 14 kg bivouac pack does not come down a slope the way an 8 kg refuge pack does, either.
The planner at the top of the page reasons over the whole loop. For one particular stage, the alpine club method works fine on the back of an envelope: take the longer of your horizontal time and your vertical time, then add half the other. Try it against a day you already know well and you will soon see which formula matches your legs.
The GR54 in 7 or 8 days: the fast version
A week for the loop means 24 to 27 km and 1,400 to 1,600 m of ascent a day, with no recovery day anywhere in it. Not a format to improvise into: it is for hikers who already string big days together and know how their body handles three long ones back to back. Worth saying plainly that this one does not mix with jet lag.
In practice, a 7-day version means merging several of the guidebook's stages into single days and, in a couple of spots, leaving the waymarked GR for more direct valley-to-valley lines. The 8-day version keeps the same logic with a bit more slack in it, and it is often the better compromise for quick walkers who would rather reach a refuge each evening than finish stages by head torch.
The GR54 in 10 or 11 days: the format we recommend
At 17 to 19 km and 1,000 to 1,100 m of ascent a day, the days run 6 to 8 hours of walking. You get to the refuge mid-afternoon, which leaves margin on the mornings when the forecast forces a dawn start. This is the rhythm we suggest most often to a regular hiker.
Below 12 days, just merging guidebook stages stops working: the days come out lopsided, with 10-hour links turning up. Better to re-cut the loop around different overnight points. Two examples that balance a 10-day round nicely: sleep at Besse-en-Oisans rather than Clavans-le-Bas on the first night (1.5 km and 150 m of ascent more, but a shorter second day), and break the Valgaudemar crossing at the Refuge du Clot Xavier Blanc, beside the Séveraisse, between Vallonpierre and Les Souffles. All four of those overnight points are in the planner at the top of the page: set the budget around 1,100 m and it spreads the stages between them itself.
One merge to avoid unless you are seriously durable: linking Le Désert-en-Valjouffrey and the Lac de la Muzelle without a night at Valsenestre. That day goes past 2,000 m of ascent and puts you on the Col de la Muzelle late in the afternoon, right when the cumulus start building.
A last piece of advice that costs one line on a leave form: book twelve days off for an eleven-day loop. Not to walk an extra day, but so you are not travelling out the morning after you finish. The last stage often ends in the early afternoon, and going straight onto a road or a train closes the trek off a bit abruptly.
That twelfth day fills itself. A morning with your feet in the Séveraisse at La Chapelle-en-Valgaudemar if you finish on the south side: the water comes straight off the glacier, so nobody stays in long, but it is exactly what legs that have swallowed 11,000 m are after. On the north side, the thermal baths at Le Monêtier-les-Bains sit right on the GR54. And there is the terrace version, a coffee and your photos, with one habit worth picking up: get the map out and put a name back on every pass you crossed and every summit you spotted from the ridges. That works well with two of you, and it works a lot less well a fortnight later, once the valleys have run together. It is also the day the phone numbers swapped in refuges turn into plans for the next trip.
Worth a mention too, since it is common on the GR20: split your Écrins loop in two. One year from La Chapelle-en-Valgaudemar to Bourg-d'Oisans, say, and the far half the year after. Less appealing when the flight is 20 hours each way, admittedly, but it pairs well with a second European trip.
The GR54 in 12 or 13 days: the guidebook split
The classic split from Bourg-d'Oisans runs to 13 stages of 3 h 30 to 9 h of walking, with a night in nearly every valley. We break them down one by one, with distances, ascent figures and GPX tracks, in our main GR54 article.
That rhythm, around 15 km and 850 m of ascent a day, frees up the time the short formats give away: the detour to the lakes below the Glacier d'Arsine, the Lac Noir and Lac Lérié on the plateau d'Emparis, a late afternoon beside the Lac de la Muzelle, an early morning watching chamois, and margin against thunderstorms. If you have come this far, that margin is worth paying for.
To save a day on this split without forcing it, one merge really works: the descent from the Lac de Vallonpierre to La Chapelle-en-Valgaudemar (3 h 30) followed by the climb back up to the Refuge des Souffles (4 h 30). Eight hours of walking in total, with a resupply (or a restaurant) at La Chapelle in the middle of the day. Bonus, the climb runs in forest shade the whole way to the Refuge des Souffles.
The GR54 in 14 or 15 days: alpine variants and rest days
Two good reasons to go past 13 days:
The alpine variants, on the itinerary from La Grave (14 days): the glacial Lac de l'Eychauda by the Pas de l'Âne and the Col des Grangettes, then the Refuge de l'Olan and the Col de Colombes above the Valgaudemar. More ascent and more technical ground, but a way off the busiest track. Even so, you are nowhere near the traffic of a Tour du Mont Blanc.
Arriving by train: L'Argentière-la-Bessée is the only railway station sitting beside the loop. Joining the route over the Col de la Pousterle adds a walking day in and another out, so 15 days and 223 km all up. The Fournel valley, with its botanical reserve of alpine eryngium, earns that detour.
On top of those itineraries there is one option we took years to schedule ourselves: the rest day. A pause at La Chapelle-en-Valgaudemar or Vallouise, halfway round, changes the character of the second half. Resupply, a night down in the valley, and you set off again on fresh legs.
Under 7 days: take a section, not the loop
In 4 or 5 days the full loop turns into a mountain race. Better to pick one section and take the time over it. The Vallouise to La Chapelle-en-Valgaudemar leg concentrates the wildest side of the tour, with the Aup Martin and the Lac de Vallonpierre: it is the one we chose for our Écrins traverse in 5 days. On the north side, La Grave to Bourg-d'Oisans over the plateau d'Emparis walks in 3 days, with bus links at both ends.
Over a long weekend, a three-day round in the Valgaudemar or a weekend based in a refuge in the Écrins gives you a real feel for the range without booking a fortnight off. Both also work well as a warm-up week if you have flown in early and want your legs sorted before the main event.
Getting to the start: the long haul, then trains and buses
One thing weighs almost as much as your elevation budget when you count your days: how you actually reach the foot of the loop, and what shape you are in when you get there.
The useful airports are Grenoble, Lyon, Geneva, Turin and Marseille. From Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane or Perth you are looking at 22 to 26 hours door to door with one stop in the Gulf or Asia, then a connection on to Geneva or Lyon. Those two are the practical arrival points; Turin and Marseille work if the routing suits.
Our standing advice for Australian trekkers: budget two extra days at the front end. One to arrive and sleep flat, one to get to the valley and walk something short. Then treat the first day of the loop as an easy one whatever your plan says. Going straight from a 24-hour transit into a 1,200 m ascent day is how a well-built schedule falls over on day three.
From the airport it is a TGV or a regional train to Grenoble or Gap, then the local bus into the valley:
Grenoble to Bourg-d'Oisans or La Grave
Briançon to Vallouise or Le Monêtier-les-Bains
Gap to La Chapelle-en-Valgaudemar
Once you are in France there is also the Paris to Briançon night train, which leaves the Gare d'Austerlitz around 21:00 and reaches Gap around 06:50, L'Argentière-les-Écrins around 08:00 and Briançon around 08:30. Two nights in a couchette and no leave burnt on travel days, which is a real saving when you are already spending two days getting to Europe. L'Argentière-la-Bessée is the only railway station on the loop itself, but the track does not run through the town, and joining the GR54 over the Col de la Pousterle adds a walking day at each end, which is where the 15-day format comes from.
The GR54 being a loop simplifies the rest: you come back to where you started, with no return transfer to arrange and no hire car parked on the far side of the range. Pick your starting point to suit your inbound travel rather than the other way around.
Timetables move about, with engineering work and replacement coaches on some dates, and July and August couchettes go early, so check current schedules on SNCF Connect before you lock in your split.
What tends to blow up a schedule
Early-season snow patches: some years the Col de l'Aup Martin stays awkward until mid-July. When it is impassable, the variant by the Fournel valley and the Pas de la Cavale reaches the Refuge du Pré de la Chaumette from the other side, at the cost of a very long day out of Vallouise. Refuge wardens know the state of the passes in real time: call them.
Summer thunderstorms: the rule of being over the pass by 13:00 can cut short a stage you had planned as a double. In July and August, a spare day in the plan is not a luxury.
Full refuges: at the height of summer, bed availability sometimes dictates the split rather than your fitness. Book early, and earlier again if you are locking in dates around international flights. The list of accommodation on the GR54 is in our main article on the tour.
Pack weight: fully self-sufficient with tent, stove and food, you slow down noticeably, especially on the technical descents. Compare the two approaches with our bivouac gear list and our article on mountain huts versus gîtes before you fix a number of days.
Walking the Écrins loop with a guide
The number of days also depends on who handles the logistics, and when you have flown halfway around the world for it, handing that over has obvious appeal. On a guided trip the stages are calibrated and the refuges booked before departure. That leaves walking at your own pace:
Écrins traverse in 5 days: the range condensed into its wildest section, in a small group. Next departure listed on the page.
Private, tailor-made Écrins tour: a dedicated mountain leader and an itinerary built around your elevation budget, over 7, 10 or 14 days. Call Robin directly on 33769447866.
Go hiking in the mountains to enjoy the sunset, a shepherd's meal cooked on the coals and fall asleep under the stars sky. A 2 days hiking trip in the Alps.
The iconic trek around Mont Blanc in 7 days through the most scenic trails, from hotel to hotel.
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Frequently asked questions
How many kilometres a day on the GR54?
On a 10-day loop the average works out around 19 km and 1,100 m of ascent a day. Over 13 days it drops to 14 to 16 km. Distance stays misleading on this ground: an 11 km stage crossing the Col de la Vaurze asks more of you than a 20 km valley stage.
How many days for the GR54 with the alpine variants?
The itinerary from La Grave with the alpine variants (Lac de l'Eychauda by the Pas de l'Âne, Pas de l'Olan and Col de Colombes) is published as 14 days, for around 12,500 m of ascent. From the station at L'Argentière-la-Bessée, count on 15 days and 223 km, with an extra walking day in each direction over the Col de la Pousterle.
Should you plan a rest day on the Écrins loop?
On formats of 10 days and up, a full or half day off at La Chapelle-en-Valgaudemar or Vallouise often decides how the end of the loop goes. Both villages let you resupply and sleep down in the valley. Coming from Australia, count that rest day on top of the two recovery days at the front end rather than instead of them.
Does the GR54 take more days than the Tour du Mont Blanc?
Yes, at comparable distance. The classic TMB is walked in 7 to 10 days where the GR54 runs to 10 to 13: the daily ascent is greater and the ground more technical, with fewer resupply points. The TMB even compresses down to 5 days in its short version, a format with no sustainable equivalent on the GR54. See our full Tour du Mont Blanc article to compare the two loops.
Can the GR54 be done in several trips?
Yes, and the loop divides naturally into 3 to 5 day legs between the valleys served by bus: Bourg-d'Oisans, La Grave, Vallouise and La Chapelle-en-Valgaudemar. It suits European walkers better than Australian ones given the flight, but it pairs well with a wider trip: one leg of the GR54 plus another range in the same holiday.
