Glacier du Tour & Albert Premier Hut Trek
The Glacier du Tour flows directly above Le Tour village, and a half-day guided walk onto its lower reaches — culminating at the Albert Premier refuge perched at 2,702 m — is one of the most rewarding and accessible glacier experiences in the entire Mont Blanc massif.
The Route & What You'll See
From Le Tour, a clear trail climbs through larch forest and then open moraine for roughly 2.5 hours to reach the Albert Premier refuge, a classic CAF (Club Alpin Français) mountain hut that has sheltered alpinists since 1930.
The path skirts the lateral moraine of the Glacier du Tour, offering close-up views of seracs and crevasses without requiring technical equipment — though crampons and an ice axe are needed if you venture onto the glacier itself with a guide.
The hut sits at the edge of a vast snowfield that leads toward the Plateau du Trient and the high-altitude routes into Switzerland — a landscape of almost lunar scale that stops even seasoned hikers in their tracks.
Staying at the Refuge & Guided Options
The Albert Premier refuge sleeps around 130 and serves a full dinner and breakfast; booking a night here means waking to alpenglow on the Tour Noir and watching rope teams set off for the high routes before dawn — an experience that distils the essence of Alpine mountaineering culture.
Several Chamonix-based guide companies, including the Bureau des Guides de Chamonix (the world's oldest mountain guide company, founded 1821), offer half-day and full-day guided glacier walks from Le Tour that include crampons, harness and instruction.
Even without a guide, the moraine walk to the hut is well within the reach of any fit hiker with good boots and is one of the few places in the valley where you can stand beside an active glacier at close range without a cable car ticket.
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