Col de Balme from Le Tour

The Col de Balme is the pass at the very head of the Chamonix valley, on the frontier between France and Switzerland, between the Chamonix valley and the Trient valley in the Swiss canton of Valais. The Chamonix tourist office gives its height as 2,191m; English Wikipedia, reading the Swisstopo map, gives 2,195m. It lies between the Tête de Balme and Les Grandes Otanes, on the line of the Tour du Mont Blanc, and many of the walkers crossing it in summer are on that tour, the tourist office notes.

The tourist office describes two ways up: on foot from the hamlet of Le Tour, above Argentière, or by the lifts of the Compagnie du Mont-Blanc’s Balme area, which open in summer for walkers. The first of those lifts is the Charamillon gondola from Le Tour, built by Doppelmayr in 2022 on the line of a six-seat gondola that ran from 1982, and it climbs from 1,489m to 1,865m. On foot it is a little over 700m of climbing from the gondola’s bottom station to the pass, on the heights those two sources give. A restaurant stands just above the col.

The gondola can carry a walker one way and leave the other to the legs, which keeps the pass and takes 376m off the climb in that direction. The Compagnie du Mont-Blanc accepts dogs on a lead on its Balme lifts, and parking at Le Tour is paid.

The pass is for a walker who wants the top of the valley and a frontier on foot, with the gondola as an option one way. It is not the walk for anyone after a summit, since a col is the low point between two; the Aiguillette des Posettes, from the same car park at Le Tour, is a summit at 2,201m.