Our hardest stages

Tour du Mont Blanc ( France, Italy, Switzerland)
Tour of the Vanoise ( France)
Julian Alps Hut-to-Hut ( Slovenia)
It follows that these three trips do not have any stages that we say are unduly hard, in this way, though they can still be very tough in the normal run of events!

Kungsleden ( Sweden)
We do not, therefore, regard any stages on this trip as falling into this 'hard' category, it being the other trip that we are running to Scandinavia. Of course, some stages are still harder than others, and the day between the Singi and Kebnekaise huts can be tricky in bad weather.

UK and Ireland
Further, you'll see that because there is no table of notably hard stages in the UK or Ireland, we don't class these as such. They can still be hard! Many stages on our UK trips for example are long in distance, rather than hard in terms of rough, rocky terrain.

Thoughts about these stages

The Tour du Mont Blanc
Don't we think the TMB is hard? Yes, we certainly do. We are alert to the difference in difficulty between the Tour du Mont Blanc and the Walker's Haute Route (Chamonix to Zermatt) being two treks of similar length (two weeks) in a similar part of the Alps. The TMB is a trip that we treat as a baseline for difficulty, being a solid and regular level 'X' to which we can compare things. It is nowhere easy, except for perhaps the stage between La Fouly and Champex which has no pass to cross. (Even that one is still a tough day that can catch people out.) The hardest stages of the TMB, though, are achievable by normal walkers prepared to grind through.

The Walker's Haute Route, by contrast, has four stages, perhaps 4 or 5, that are a step higher: brief stretches of very bouldery or very loose ground in the context of a super-long stage of walking, or a day of unusually rocky terrain, or in the case of the two-day finish into Zermatt (known as the Europaweg) some solidly uphill ground and then some loose ground through and around cols.

Shorter-but-tricky stages
Our Alta Via 1 and Julian Alps Hut-to-Hut trips feature many shorter stages in terms of pure distance, but with tricky bits asking much of balance and mountain-sense. We would not really see these as extremely difficult stages, even if they are in some ways harder than the norm.

Please ask us for guidance about toughness of stages, as you consider your trip. You might want to avoid these harder stages or you might want to seek them out, relish them, and love them!