On his way up from Champex to Bovine-Alpage, leading a group at the conservative pace that guided groups typically move, Kingsley Jones watched Xavier Thévenard — one of the greatest trail runners alive — lap them three times. Up and down the same slope, sprinting, getting his vertical metres in. Kingsley's group was taking an hour to climb what Thévenard was covering in a fraction of that, repeatedly, for training. Thévenard stopped and said hello, explained what he was doing, wished them well for the rest of the tour.
"There's no elitism," Kingsley says. "Just very, very friendly mountain people who are super approachable."
He has also, over sixty circuits of the Tour du Mont Blanc, met Kilian Jornet training on the trails, encountered Walter Bonatti himself at the hut named after him in the Italian Val Ferret, and come to know the hut guardians and their extended families well enough that arriving at each refuge feels less like checking in and more like visiting a friend. This is what sixty laps produces: a familiarity with a place that most walkers, doing it once, can only glimpse.
The Tour du Mont Blanc runs approximately 170 kilometres in a circuit around the Mont Blanc massif, crossing from France into Italy into Switzerland and back into France. It takes most walkers between seven and twelve days depending on how they arrange their stages. Kingsley has done it in every season — spring snowfields, high summer, autumn colour, and sections that remain safe and beautiful even under full winter cover — and says that no two loops have ever felt the same.
The character shifts noticeably at each border, something he’s qualified to point out having crossed each frontier sixty times. Parachute a walker into any stage, he suggests, and they would know within minutes which country they were in. In France, the chalets in the high pastures have a particular form. Cross into Italy and the rooflines change — stone slate, Aostan architecture. Switzerland brings the small wooden stilt-chalets, traditional mazots built on stone stilts to keep the harvest safe. The food changes at each border. The language changes. Until the Euro unified France and Italy, the currency changed too.
"It makes each area very, very distinct," he says.
The Bag Problem
Kingsley has, over sixty circuits, become progressively better at packing less. He has watched people arrive at the trailhead with bags that make him wince.
If you are walking hut to hut — which is the way most people do the TMB — almost nothing extra is needed. Bedding is provided. Half-board means evening meal, bed and breakfast. What you need additionally: a sleeping bag liner for hygiene, a head torch for nocturnal navigation to the bathroom. A 25-litre pack is more than adequate. Trail runners doing the UTMB manage with a 12-to-15-litre race vest.
He advocates trail shoes over hiking boots for most people, most of the time — lighter, less tiring, good grip, good cushioning in the modern maximalist versions. The caveat is early season, when snow patches remain on the high passes and something with a stiffer sole — a B1 or B2 mountain boot — makes it easier to kick steps and hold edges. For people with weak ankles, more support is always sensible. Otherwise: carry less, move easily, enjoy it more.
Trekking poles are the other variable he mentions, and his advice here is simply to try them before you go if you haven't used them. The Tour du Mont Blanc is a war of attrition on the body over multiple consecutive days, and anything that reduces the load on the joints over that kind of duration compounds in your favour.
The fitness question is one he finds slightly reductive when it comes in the form of parkrun times or half-marathon training. What matters for the TMB is not aerobic capacity in isolation but the body's ability to recover and perform consecutively — what he calls back-to-back resilience. Ligament strength in the ankles. Feet that are used to boots. Shoulders that have carried a pack. The second day is always harder than the first, he notes, because the body is already fatigued. Training that replicates that — longer back-to-back sessions rather than a single long effort — is what really prepares you for what the trail.
Altitude is a minor factor. The highest passes are around 2,500 metres, below the threshold where most people notice any effect. By day three or four, most walkers have settled into a rhythm, have their hill legs, and simply pace themselves over the passes without thinking much about the altitude at all.
What He Loves
Kingsley’s favourite view on the trail is the Tête du Four, a variant off the Col du Bonhomme that gives what he describes as a secret view of Mont Blanc on the western section — a day before most walkers see it coming over the Col de la Seigne into Italy.
His favourite hut in summer is the Bonhomme Refuge, the highest on the tour, sitting between the Contamines Valley and the Beaufort region. In winter it's the Bonatti Hut in the Italian Val Ferret, where he once met Walter Bonatti himself, before Bonatti's death.
And then there is the Belle Place Refuge, on the last stage, above Chamonix, which he brings up last. Every person who completes the TMB passes it on the final descent. From there, you can see the Chamonix Valley below, Mont Blanc across, the Glacier des Bossons falling from the summit. The end is visible. Gravity takes over. Another loop is nearly done.
"It marks another passage," he says. "And in a way, the end is in sight."
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His single piece of advice for someone setting out on the TMB for the first time: lift your eyes from the trail.
It is easy, he says, to become fixated on the destination of the day — the next hut, the top of the next pass — and to miss what is happening at eye level and above. The water mills in the Swiss Val Ferret. The old bread ovens in traditional villages. The Sentier des Champignons, the trail of mushrooms below Champex, with its carved wooden figures among the trees like a grinning marmot holding a knife and fork behind a trunk.
These things take no extra time. They require only that you look up.
Sixty times around, and Kingsley still makes an effort to look up. There’s always something new to see.
