WILD VANOIS
TIGNES 2100 –> TERMIGNON
VIA ALPINA DAY 60 – THURSDAY 20 AUGUST 2026
DISTANCE HIKED: 32.10 km
ELEVATION GAIN: 1,110 m
TOTAL DISTANCE HIKED: 1,523.93 km
TOTAL ELEVATION GAIN: 80, 178 m
Amazing how much better we felt after our short stay in Tignes. This trail has been exhausting, and we are both looking forward to finishing.
We left the hotel at 7am, heading towards our next mountain pass, Col de la Leisse at 2,761m.
An hour and a half after leaving the hotel, we entered Vanoise National Park. The landscape looked so intimidating—a wide-open valley surrounded by glacial peaks. One runner and one hiker passed us, and that was all the people we saw until we reached the third refuge on the trail.
Soon after entering the park, the dark clouds delivered. It started to rain quite hard and, combined with the strong wind, I got cold very quickly. Hammer felt fine, even though he was wearing a short-sleeved shirt under his rain jacket. Such a change from yesterday. Fortunately, the rain didn’t last long, and as we continued hiking, the wind eased, making for much more pleasant conditions.
The landscape was nothing short of majestic. Soaring peaks, some still carrying glaciers, waterfalls fed by glacial melt, and wide-open valleys. With hardly another hiker around, it felt like true wilderness—something we hadn’t really experienced on this trail to date.
We passed the first refuge without stopping, afraid that if we got warm and comfortable, we’d never want to leave. By the time we reached the second hut, the rain had stopped. Just below it was a shuttle bus stop, taking hikers from the junction uphill to the next refuge or further, as we discovered later.
The third hut, Refuge de Plan du Lac, was also on the shuttle bus route, with buses taking hikers down to a car park. The landscape around here was amazing, and this refuge would definitely be my pick if I were looking to stay in the mountains.
From here, we descended towards the car park, leaving the best parts of the park behind us. I noticed that the shuttle bus ran all the way to Termignon, our destination.
“Let’s get the bus,” I said to Hammer. “We’ll be in town before the rain returns.” Unfortunately, by the time I suggested it, we’d already walked past the bus.
The descent from here to Termignon was awful. I wish I had insisted that we turn around and take the shuttle. It was a 1,000m descent on a rocky, steep trail that, from appearances, was seldom used, although thankfully it had been cleared of overgrown vegetation.
Halfway down, Hammer conceded that the descent had taken away from the beauty of our morning. He wished we’d taken the shuttle too.
Slowly, we made our way down to the valley. The sky had darkened considerably, but Hammer was certain we had plenty of time to reach the campground where we planned to stay overnight.
A few claps of thunder sounded in the distance and, just as we were registering at the campground, the skies opened. A very heavy downpour began. We got our campsite and the tent up in the rain, and the forecast was for it to continue sometime through the night, followed by another rainy day tomorrow.
It was a day of two halves—a brilliant morning in a landscape of wild beauty, followed by a miserable descent on a rocky trail, passing the ruins of old farmhouses and remnants of a life gone by.
I fell asleep before Hammer, dreaming of the fluffy white towels in our Tignes hotel while the rain pounded on the nylon shell of the Big Agnes Hilton.
