The Tour du Mont-Blanc when you're afraid of heights : where the exposure really is, and how to dodge it

Almost everyone who books onto the Tour du Mont-Blanc asks some version of the same thing: is there a narrow track with a drop right beside it, and what happens if I freeze halfway across.

Here's the honest answer, in two sentences. Over the roughly 170 kilometres of the route, there are three spots where the exposure is real, and put together they add up to less than an hour of walking. All three can be dodged, one of them on a signed track you'll find the GPS track for further down this page.

Nature and mountain guides, we cross these spots several times a season, often with someone in the group who's not too keen on the exposure. This article covers exactly where they are, what they're actually like, what makes them tougher on some days, and how to get around them without missing out on any of the tour.

"Exposed" can mean two totally different things, and that's where people get confused

Up in the mountains, a spot called "exposed" can mean two things that have nothing to do with each other. Exposed to a drop means you could fall. Exposed to the elements means an open ridge with no shelter, where a storm can catch you out.

The TMB is heavily exposed in the second sense and barely exposed at all in the first. The Grand Col Ferret (2,537 m), Col de la Seigne (2,516 m), Col de la Croix du Bonhomme (2,479 m) and Col des Fours (2,665 m) are all billed as exposed, and they are, to wind, cold, afternoon storms. None of the four has a drop next to the track. They're wide, grassy or rocky passes, where the real trick is timing, not terrain.

That distinction on its own sorts out the question for most of the route. The TMB is a wide, well-marked track for over 95% of its length, with plenty of slope underfoot but nothing that looks anything like a ledge above a drop.

What's left is the small percentage this article is actually about.

The three spots where the exposure is real

The Trè-le-Champ ladders, stage 10

This is the bit everyone talks about, and the only fixed gear on the classic route. It's on stage 10, from Trè-le-Champ to Refuge de la Flégère, about an hour and a half of climbing through forest from Trè-le-Champ (1,400 m).

Eleven metal ladders in a row get you over a rock band, followed by a chimney fitted with steps. Give yourself 30 to 45 minutes from the first rung to Tête-aux-Vents (2,132 m).

Three things are worth knowing, and they're more reassuring than not, honestly. It's not eleven ladders stacked one after the other: they're short bursts, broken up by normal track, handrails and the odd step. Most take under a minute, and only one is noticeably taller, around eight metres. Best bit: the ladders lean against the rock face, they're not vertical, with evenly spaced rungs and handrails the whole way.

On a ladder, you're facing the rock. Your hands are busy, the holds are solid, and your eyes are on the next rung, thirty centimetres away. Loads of people who aren't fussed on heights get through these ladders no worries at all, because that position just doesn't put the drop in view. What spooks people here is usually the look of the thing rather than the actual exposure.

One practical thing nobody thinks to ask about beforehand: there's no harness, no lanyard, no belay point. This isn't a via ferrata, it's fixed rungs. People sometimes turn up expecting to clip in and find there's nothing to clip onto. Good to know that the night before, not halfway up.

The rock-flake ledge, straight after

This is the bit people talk about least, and the one that trips up the most people.

Above the ladders, a short two-metre stretch has you edging along the cliff on the rim of a rock flake, with about fifty metres of drop underneath. It's equipped and the footing is wide. But you're not facing the rock anymore: you're side-on to it, above the drop, with nothing to grab in front of your eyes.

It's a different kind of fear altogether. On the ladder, your body knows exactly what to do. On the ledge, there's nothing ahead to hold onto, and your eyes drift straight to the wrong spot. In our experience, when someone freezes along this bit, it's almost always here, not on the ladders they'd been stressing about for three days.

Two things sort it out completely: keep one hand on the cable, and lock your eyes on the exact spot where your foot's about to land, not the ground fifty metres down. It's over fast. Ten seconds and it's behind you.

The Col du Brévent ladders, stage 11

Here's the blind spot in all of this. Heaps of people prep for the Trè-le-Champ ladders, get through them, feel pretty chuffed with themselves, then run into two more ladders the next day they never saw coming.

On stage 11, from La Flégère to Les Houches, the climb to Brévent crosses a rocky spur fitted with two metal ladders of 8 and 9 rungs, around 2,400 m, just past Col du Brévent (2,368 m). A handrail gets you out of the section. It's a lot shorter than Trè-le-Champ and less full-on, but the ground around it is a maze of sharp rock, so you need to follow the markers closely.

This spot has one quirk: it lands on the last day, on legs that have already put in ten days of walking, and often after a windy pass. Fatigue counts for more here than the exposure does.

And the Bionnassay footbridge, which isn't really the issue

It often gets lumped in with the TMB's scarier spots, and that's not really fair. The suspension bridge over the Bionnassay torrent sits on the Col du Tricot variant, so it's off the main route, and it's sturdy, wide, with rails on both sides.

It bounces underfoot and the torrent roars away below, which is enough to get plenty of people moving faster. But there's nothing to actually cross: you walk, you hold the cables, done in twenty seconds. And if it's not your thing, the classic route via Col de Voza skips it altogether, without missing anything important.

The descent from Col du Tricot, on the other hand, is steep and loose underfoot. That's the real thing to watch on this variant, way more than the footbridge that hogs all the attention.

The ladder bypass, measured

A signed track avoids the rock band completely. It kicks off at Col des Montets, about fifteen minutes above Trè-le-Champ, passes the visitor chalet of the Réserve naturelle des Aiguilles Rouges, and climbs the valley with no fixed gear at all.

It adds 2 km and 85 metres of climbing, roughly forty extra minutes of walking. That's it. The climbing is nearly identical because both routes are heading for the same spot: the ladders go up steeper, the bypass goes up longer.

The bit that matters most, and that puts people at ease as soon as we mention it: this track rejoins the TMB at the Tête-aux-Vents cairn (2,132 m), exactly where the ladder section ends, so before the turn-off to Lac Blanc. Skipping the ladders doesn't cost you Lac Blanc, or a single metre of the rest of the tour. You only miss out on the rock band, nothing else.

• Distance :↔ 8.2 km
• Dénivelé positif :↗ 771 m
• Dénivelé négatif :↘ 329 m

Two things worth knowing before you decide.

Decide before you leave Trè-le-Champ. This is the single most useful bit of advice on this whole page. The two routes split down the bottom, not up top. If you head up towards the ladders and bail at the foot of the first one, you'll have to go all the way back down and then back up to Col des Montets, which costs you an hour and heaps of motivation. Deciding the night before, back at the refuge, costs nothing.

The bypass isn't exactly flat either, to be fair. No fixed gear and no section above a drop, that's true. But it's still a mountain track, with slope underfoot and steep views down into the valley. If your unease comes purely from seeing exposure, regardless of actual danger, you'll still hit a few moments here that take some nerve. Saying otherwise would just be setting you up for the same trouble twice.

Can you do the whole TMB without a single equipped section?

Yep, entirely, and without any mechanical transport if you'd rather skip that too.

It comes down to three choices, at the only three points where it actually matters:

• Stage 1: Col de Voza instead of Col du Tricot. You skip the footbridge and the steep descent.
• Stage 10: Col des Montets instead of the ladders. You add 2.1 km and 40 minutes.
• Stage 11: the climb to Brévent via the piste instead of the equipped spur, or the Planpraz cable car from Chamonix if your legs are cooked.

The rest of the route runs on wide walking track. You keep Col de la Seigne, the Grand Col Ferret, the balcony tracks of the Italian Val Ferret, Lac Blanc, and the crossing of the Aiguilles Rouges. In other words, you keep the whole tour.

And if you were thinking about one of the higher variants, the Fenêtre d'Arpette isn't a fear-of-heights problem at all, it's a scree problem: loose blocks, a faint track, no drop. It can be dodged via Bovine, but for reasons that have nothing to do with fear of heights. The comparison of all eleven variants is in our article on the Tour du Mont-Blanc variants.

What makes a spot harder, and what helps

The same spot doesn't feel the same two days running. These things matter just as much as the terrain itself.

Rain. Wet metal rungs get slippery, and wet hands don't grip as well. If it rained overnight, give it an hour to dry out or take the bypass. It's the only factor that turns a psychological difficulty into a real risk.

Early season. Before mid-July, leftover snow on the approach and morning frost on the shaded rungs can make things trickier. It clears through the day: if you're at all unsure when you wake up, give the sun an hour to do its thing, or take the bypass, which has no rungs that can ice up.

Fog, weirdly enough, which helps. Sounds backwards, but it's true: when you can't see the bottom, fear of heights eases right off. Plenty of tricky crossings have gone smoothly purely because the cloud was down low. On the flip side, fog makes the markers at Brévent harder to follow.

The queue. In July and August, day walkers heading up to Lac Blanc create waits that can stretch to three quarters of an hour at the foot of the tallest ladder. For someone uneasy about heights, that's the real problem: being stuck on the rungs with someone right behind you, unable to slow down or back off. Setting off early sorts that, and so does going first in your group: nobody behind you, and all the time you need.

Your pack. Fifteen kilos changes your balance on a ladder, especially a tall pack that's not cinched down. Tighten the hip belt, snug the shoulder straps, and stow your poles before you get to the foot of the section: two free hands aren't up for debate.

Fatigue. It amplifies fear of heights, which is why the Brévent ladders, short and easy as they are, sometimes give more grief than the ones at Trè-le-Champ. The night before a section you're dreading, a decent sleep beats an extra stage every time.

When it all locks up: what actually works

Freezing on a section isn't a big deal, and it says nothing about your ability. It happens to people who've been walking for twenty years. What matters is what happens in the three minutes after.

For whoever it's happening to. Stop staring into the distance, bring your eyes back to your hands and feet, and breathe slowly, letting the out-breath run longer than the in-breath. The body settles before the head does. Then move from one exact point to the next, without looking at the rest. Loads of people say the same thing afterwards: the section itself took five minutes, the mental energy it burnt took two hours. Expect to feel wiped out afterwards, and don't line up a big stage straight after.

For whoever's walking with them. Get in front, not behind: showing where to put a foot helps, pushing doesn't do anything. Talk about the next hold, not the drop, and definitely not about how there's nothing to be scared of. "Nah, it's easy" is about the most useless thing you can say, because it just piles shame on top of the fear. A hand held out at the right moment often sorts out what ten minutes of talking never would.

And if it still won't budge. Turning back is a mountain call like any other. On the TMB, right at this spot, it costs an hour and two kilometres. That's cheap. What's expensive is forcing someone who's scared: panic on an equipped section is the real danger, way more than the section itself.

In our groups, this usually gets sorted over dinner the night before, nice and quiet, without it turning into a whole group thing. That's part of what we're doing as guides too: get it out in the open beforehand, not at the foot of the ladder.

The direction you walk changes everything

The TMB is walked anticlockwise by the vast majority of hikers, and that's good news: going that way, you climb the Trè-le-Champ ladders.

Clockwise, you're going down them. Not the same exercise at all. Going down, your eyes point downward, your foot hunts for the next rung without seeing it, and your pack pulls you backward. For someone uneasy about heights, climbing is a lot more comfortable than descending.

If you're set on clockwise for other reasons, the bypass via Col des Montets works just as well that way round, and it's probably the safe default choice.

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