Hiking the TMB - My Advice

it is cold outside but I have this baby to keep me warm okay ever since I made my video of the gr20 where I tell you my tips and my advice I've been getting some messages from people who are asking me to make one about the two lumen run so yesterday I sat down and I thought of all the things that you might be needing when you're planning to hike the two blue moon blog and I came up with a lot of stuff actually 14 I came up with 14 things that might be helpful when you're planning to do this trip in this video I won't be talking about gear since I already made a video about the gear I took with me on the two of them alone so if you want to see that video I'll link it somewhere in this video or in the description cool the link is in the description guys the first thing I wanted to talk about is the starting point of the tool the moon block so the tool demon block is a loop trail so a big circle that goes around the moon long and it goes through France Switzerland and Italy and the trail passes through a lot of villages so with a lot of villages come a lot of starting points so there is one official starting point for the tool de maua and that is less oh Sh that's in France and there is like a thing where you can walk underneath that says to the Mont Blanc starting point or something like that so in many guides this is the starting point but in total I think there are eight points on the trail where you can start hiking because there's a road so you have some popular ones those are ledouche la Condamine that's in France you have qu Maya in Italy and you have Champa in Switzerland these are also great villages to like take a break an ice-cream enjoy the view you can take a swim in Champa great but there are also some other points where you can start hiking the two of them run and those points are I wrote them down are jaunty a tree on the shape you and love fully so you can start actually kind of wherever you want I myself started in Lesage and I went clockwise which is not the normal direction for the two of us and that was hard so the first thing I did on the tool in one block was the ascent of local Iran and that was I think a thousand five hundred meters of ascending it was a lot so maybe maybe maybe that's not the best starting point when you're going clockwise maybe so the second thing you might be thinking about is how to get to the trail so it depends on where you start of course most people go to Simoni that's a little little village that is inside the loop of the tool Dumoulin I went to some Oney and I took the train from Brussels to Leo and from leo I took a bla bla cap it's a thing in France actually a lot of people do it it's an application you can have on your phone so in the application you just say I want to go from Lyon to Simoni and then it searches for other people who are going with their own car from Lyon to Sony people do it in France and it's actually really nice so you might consider that another thing people do quite a lot is take a train to some uni or two lasers that's also possible another option might be to take a plane to genève or to co-ceo is in Switzerland but I would say if you live in Europe especially if you live in Belgium or the Netherlands or Germany France please consider to take a train the trail is really accessible by train you know it's good for the environment check the third thing I want to talk about is a tip and that is to take your time to get used to the oxygen levels on the trail I didn't really do that I just arrived at the trail and I started hiking and it really felt weird because I was hiking and I was maybe going up well not so much but a little and after like five to ten steps I was really it was weird and then someone told me maybe it's because you're not used to the oxygen levels here and then I thought hmm that's possible so if you have the time just maybe first take a few days in Schiavoni so that your body can just like adjust to the oxygen levels there and then you'll probably have a better experience on your first days the fourth tip is for people who are using this specific guide so this is the cicerone to the moon long trekking guide it's okay it's not the best it's quite heavy because it describes the route in a clockwise direction and in an anti-clockwise direction which makes it really heavy because from like Iran this all this is another direction if I would make a guide I would just include one direction yeah one direction I would just include one direction and then just let people read that direction backwards but this is just wait that's not really necessary in my opinion but that's not what I wanted to say so if you use this guide make sure that you add some time to the estimated time of each stage so for example here we have stage eight and it says that it's like a four and a half hours to five hour hike that's not true that is not true I would say at at least one to two hours to each stage because really these times are fast i felt quite bad on the first days of the of the trail because i thought i might this slow really how do people do this in like five hours or this and four hours and then i met some people who had the exact same guide and told me that they had the exact same problem so then i felt a little better so just add some hours to the estimated times of each stage in this book because they are like fast as hell so the fifth thing i wanted to talk about is wild camping i am a big fan of wild camping so everywhere where I'm allowed to well camp I will do it I don't like to sleep in the huts because then you're just in a big room with a lot of people who snore so yeah wild camping I'm a big fan of it I will do it when it's possible on a totally moon blah it's a bit tricky to do this in France normally it's fine you can well camp wherever you want but only if you put your tent up for one night so you cannot just like arrive at 3 p.m. and put your tent up because then you're staying there for like an afternoon that's not ok but I mean mostly when you're doing a trail like this you will just put up your tent for one night so in France it's fine France is ok in Switzerland and Italy you are not allowed to well camp in Switzerland you have some campsites so actually it's quite ok I stayed at two campsites just when I was in Switzerland but in Italy there is no option for like a campsite or putting your tent up next to the huts it's not allowed and I don't really understand why because this is a really popular trail so why just not make a campsite for people who want to put up their tent but I don't know so what I did in Italy was that I stayed in a hotel fancy pants a in umeå and I did one night of illegal camping I came across a guide on the trail and he told me that just before I was going clockwise so in my direction just before the refugio the bow naughty there was some kind of place with old ruins of a house and he told me that people wild camp there quite often it's still not allowed it's still very much illegal but people do it I hope this video doesn't get really famous because it's quite a secret spot so I decided to go there and I just took a look around and there was a lot of garbage so at that moment I quite understood why you cannot wild camp in Italy so if you decide to take this camp spot and to camp there to do some illegal wild camping one it's at your own risk there could be police stopping by and giving you a fine mm but - if you do it please just take five minutes of your time to pick up some garbage from the ground and drop it in the bins of refugio debone a team it's like a five minute walk from each other and just please just do it and Leave No Trace I mean please okay the sixth thing that you've got to keep in mind is that in Switzerland they use another currency than in France and Italy so in France and Italy its euros but in Switzerland it's the Swiss franc be sure that you carry some amount of Swiss francs if you want to buy some stuff in Switzerland because if you want to pay with euros or a credit card you mostly have to pay some extra amount because you're paying in Euros so I'm just keep that in mind take other cash for Switzerland the seventh tip I have for you today is a tip that I also had about the gr20 and it's one of my face it's tips it is that you should try to leave early in the morning the tilde Mumbai's quite a popular trail and because of its many access points there are a lot of day hikers as well if you are completely fine with people just ignore this tip but I like the solitude of a trail and I found out that if I left early in the morning I was quite alone on trail you still pass a lot of people it's a busy trail but it's better if you leave early then at least you have these first hours in the morning the eighth thing you might want to know is the indications of the trail and how well the trail is indicated so if you watched my video of the two of them on blog you might have seen that I got lost a couple of times the indications on trail are not so good and in each country they are different in Switzerland they were actually quite ok but in France it's as if people just went around like Oh which color are we gonna use now I will use red now and now which color are we gonna use let's use some blue mmm so just to be sure take a GPS and once in half an hour take a look at it just to check am I on the right path yeah I'm on the right path let's keep on walking the ninth thing I wanted to talk about it's variants so if this is the totally one bra roughly just a big circle you sometimes have variants and those variants go in so mostly that means going up a mountain and then back down you have I think five or so variants that go in like this and if you are in good shape and you're mentally all in a good state do the variant the variants are mostly prettier because you go up a mountain you have a really spectacular view you go down it's just it's more dry the variants are more drama if you like drama in nature and in mountains take the variance the tenth thing I want to talk about is really small it's just what you say to other hikers when you pass them in the three different countries so in France and in Switzerland you say bonjour it's just hello in French Bonjour and in Italy you say ciao or buongiorno I don't know if you have it as well but sometimes I pass english-speaking people and they just keep saying good morning hello good afternoon how are you things like this and I don't know why I don't know why but I find it quite a bit a teensy tiny bit ignorant to be on a trail in France or in Switzerland or easily and just keep speaking your own language I'm not expecting you to be able to have a conversation in French but just just if you pass hikers say bonjour or in Italy ciao or buongiorno I don't know I don't know do other people have this as well or am I just being a difficult person let me know tell me if I'm a difficult person or not okay the 11:00 thing I want to talk about its temperature some people have been sending me questions regarding the thickness of their sleeping bag that they should take on the two of them on blog I would say normally you won't be cold at night I mean yeah you should take a sleeping bag huh but it's not freezing at night I think the temperatures drop below 10 degrees Celsius something around that like 8 degrees 9 degrees 10 degrees and during the day temperatures rise to 30 degrees I was there when there was a big heat wave in Europe so in Belgium it was around 35 degrees all day and they're on a tour do moonlight was like 20 to 25 degrees then the 12th thing I just want to say it's really really small it's just a little little little thing between the summit of La Cueva and la flesche yeah there is no water just keep it in mind take a little note on your map or on your guide or anything there's no water in between these two that's the 12th thing then the 13 thing I want to say is that you don't need big heavy bulky hiking boots on this trails it's just not necessary the path is mostly just a nice path without too many your ox or stones or anything like that so you don't need these big hiking boots I took trail runners and mmm I don't think I will be switching back to big boots they're lightweight and they are more comfortable in my opinion and then the last thing I wanted to touch on or just I wanted to say to you is wear sunscreen wear sunscreen really even if you are wearing long pants like yoga pants or long-sleeve shirts the Sun is just more aggressive in the mountains so just wear sunscreen don't forget it and don't think I never get burned you probably will get burned so yeah these are all my tips for the tool demo blog if you have questions as always just leave them in the comments down below I will try to answer them if I don't answer your question that's probably because I already answered it in a previous video or because maybe I will answer it in a next video and then maybe I never said this before in a video but if you want you can subscribe to my channel this is such a sales talk so if you want just subscribe I'm planning on making more videos I try to make one every week week and a half two weeks it depends on the weather because I always film outside and yeah maybe give the video a thumbs up they don't go unnoticed no no I see them so yeah okay the sale stock is over thank you for watching enjoy your hike of the tool demon blah really it's beautiful it's really beautiful and I'll see you in the next few yeah bye bye [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Floor Denil

Views: 10,497

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Id: HsIjc_yHCpk

Length: 18min 31sec (1111 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 20 2020