Wild camping is allowed on Tour de Mont Blanc in France? | Day 5 of TMB Chalets de Raja- Les Mottets

We waked up to a sunny windy morning in our wild camping spot and we don’t remember if we slept well or not cause we were so tired but we did remember that we were sliding down the sleeping pads all night long. The slope was too steep apparently and we couldn’t do nothing about it.

We felt so sore and tired from yesterday’s adventure that we hardly could get out of our tent. We knew that we are not going to conquer another mountain today but we still needed to progress forward. So we had our breakfast and started to go downhill. We planned to be searching the wild camping spots all the way through as we didn’t want to do many kms and felt so sleepy.

By the way we saw different signs in different places of camping is not allowed and only that day we realized that it meant the camping is not allowed if it’s at daylight, for more than a night and fire was prohibited. Wild camping for the night from 19pm to 9am or bivouac how they call it there is allowed. And in general we feel like it’s true for many places. Nobody can really punish you for staying one night in a certain place unless it’s a private area with a guard.

So we got down to the village Les Chapieux and went further along the river. The trail started to gradually going uphill again and all the first part was very easy going on the pavement car road. We were looking for the places to camp but there weren’t really much to choose from – all were very wet or steep and rocky. Also we don’t like it to be seen from the road.

So we continued our way up and halfway to our destination the trail started to become steeper and rockier climbing the side of the mountain. It wasn’t very long but for our sore back and legs it was already a lot. We had to go over lots of the water streams and waterfalls along the way over which there weren’t any bridges you just have to skip and jump through them.

So we got to the Ville de Glaciers that was looking kind of strange with several ugly concrete buildings where nobody was living probably. And ss we saw no possible places to camp we continued further up the trail almost to the Refuge Les Mottets where we saw some ruins of the old rocky buildings and there were some more or less flat spots to camp. And we decided to stop at one of them. The ground was still very uneven with lots of rocks and vegetation but we did our best.The hiking trail was passing very close to us we were right above it that we didn’t like but that day we had no other option and were grateful that at least there was some flat surface.

So we ended up doing 9km – more than enough for us that day. We planned to do less but the trail decided the other way. We had our improvised shower to water off the sweat from the two days of hiking, had our always delicious porridge and with the sound of the cow bells pasturing on the other side of the valley we went to sleep.