Climb Mont Blanc 🇫🇷 & Monte Viso 🇮🇹 Late Sept 2023

An ascent of Western Europe’s highest mountain is a big challenge and superb mountaineering expedition.  When combined with a late summer season climb of Monte Viso, ‘The Stone King‘ a big & pointy rocky peak in the Southern Alps, this makes for a magnificent and memorable week of high altitude alpine mountaineering.  By climbing later in the summer season (or the early autumn season in the high mountains), the mountains are generally cooler and quieter than in high summer.

This 6 day course includes 3 days in the Italian Alps mountaineering, warming up, climbing Monte Viso and spending 2 nights in an Italian Rifugio.  This allows a good amount of time for mountaineering training and acclimatisation and thus hopefully means you are able to actually enjoy a successful ascent of Mont Blanc whilst also making fine ascent along the way.  It’s a more technical ascent than our Gran Paradiso warm up and works well for those thinking about a future ascent of the Matterhorn.  For additional acclimatisation & mountaineering training with a big glacier journey etc please note you can also join our 2 day Mont Blanc training course just prior to the Monte Rose section of this trip.

There is then a rest day between the Monte Viso and Mont Blanc summit phases.

We understand the balance between preparing well and saving enough energy for the long summit day and because of this, and our first class Mountain Guides, we have an excellent summit success record on Mont Blanc.  Despite this good record, our courses are not about dragging people to the summit. We give you a good insight in to general Alpine Mountaineering and have a fun & sociable time along the way.

• Climb Mont Blanc & Monte Viso
• Enjoy 6 good days alpine mountaineering in the Mont Blanc & Monte Viso Massifs
• Develop your general mountaineering skills & do some quality scrambling and big summit day as part of the Mont Blanc preparation
• Spend 4 nights in high mountain huts sleeping at between 2500m and 3800m
• Get to know how your body reacts to a high altitude mountain environment, good preparation for other expeditions & Matterhorn ascent
• Have an enjoyable & sociable week in the mountains

Can You Climb Mont Blanc & Monte Viso?

Whilst it is not necessary to be an experienced mountaineer to climb Mont Blanc with a Mountain Guide, a very good level of fitness is necessary and at least some strong hill walking experience will be highly beneficial. The summit day could be 11+ hours long, at high altitude, so you should be physically and mentally prepared for this very considerable challenge. By the standard routes, Mont Blanc is not a difficult technical peak but it does involve some steep rocky scrambling and folk do regularly underestimate it.  We highly recommend doing one of our Mont Blanc Training weekend courses prior to your ascent if possible.

The Monte Viso climb is more technical with lots of rocky scrambling and you will need some existing scrambling and crampon experience.  You can find out all the details on that 3 day programme on our Climb Monte Viso page here.