Day Three Crosses Into Switzerland
Courmayeur to La Fouly on the Tour du Mont Blanc, where the reward for the climb is a hut, a border, and hot chocolate described as divine.
Trail Runner editor Abby Levene is five days into the Tour du Mont Blanc, and day three is the one that crosses a border. Courmayeur to La Fouly: out of Italy, into Switzerland, over rippling green mountains that keep folding into more mountains.
What makes the TMB the best week of running on earth is not the trail, it is the infrastructure. You climb all day and a luxurious mountain hut appears with a bed in it. Levene calls the hot chocolate divine, and after that much vertical you should believe her.
The whole route waits for you every summer. No lottery, no qualifier, no bib.