Stages 3,4 – Refuge des Mottets to Courmayeur

Start: Refuge des Mottets
End: Hotel Lo Campangar in Dolonne (neighborhood of Courmayeur)
Time: 10 hours including a long food stop at Refuge Maison Vielle
Difficulty: Moderate, just challenging due to the length of the day

This day I decided to hike with these two other solo hikers. It was a nice change of pace from the two days of hiking solo, though I still greatly enjoy hiking solo! They were going almost all the way to Courmayeur, but I had planned to stop at Cabane du Combal and get to Courmayeur the next day. However, after my poor night’s sleep the previous night, I was itching to get a private room that night, which wouldn’t be possible at Cabane du Combal. So I decided to hike with them all the way to Courmayeur which turned out to be a long but doable day.

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We began the day with a head start relative to most people’s stage 3, as we started at Mottets rather than Les Chapieux. This gave us an advantage in both distance and the amount of ascent we had to do.

I found Stage 3 to be easier than Stage 4, despite the fact that Stage 3 has more ascent than Stage 4 even with the head start.

We hiked about 700m ascent to get to the top of Col de la Seigne. Then, it was a nice valley descent to Rifugio Elisabetta.

Then came stage 4. Kev Reynolds describes this portion as undulating at I have to agree, though it was very beautiful. It is more difficult than it appears given the raw statistics of its ascent in the book. However, it was full of nice views and a nice part of the walk.

Eventually, we got to Refuge Maison Vielle where we had a late lunch. I had cheesy gnocchi there which was absolutely delicious. It was a beautiful atmosphere, one of my favorites of the whole trip. I definitely recommend having at least a drink at Maison Vielle.

This point I said ciao to the other hikers, who were stopping there for the day. I needed to do the full descent into Courmayeur to get my private room for the night. Dolonne, a small neighborhood of Courmayeur, was described in the book as “an attractive, stone-built village with crowded narrow streets”. This sounded pretty good to me so I decided to stay there for the night.

Since I was staying Dolonne and not the main part of Courmayeur, I needed to do the Plan Chécrouit option from Maison Vielle to get there. The variant via Monte Bianco, which is primarily an easy road path, does not go through Dolonne.

This descent turned out to be quite tough on the knees, possibly even tougher on the knees than the descent via the Col de Tricot on the first day. I made my way via a seemingly never-ending series of downhill switchbacks in the forest.

By the time I got to Dolonne, I was quite relieved. I stayed at Hotel Lo Compagnar, which was absolutely perfect and probably my favorite hotel of the trip. It had the advantage of being the only temperature-cool room that I stayed in during the heat wave that lasted the entire trip. Also the staff were lovely and the breakfast was delicious. They recommended Fuoripista for dinner which I enjoyed quite a bit.

Overall this was one of my favorite days!

Previous: Stage 2 – Les Contamines to Refuge des Mottets
Next: Stage 5 – Courmayeur to Rifugio Bonatti (Val Ferret)