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GR20 – Some time ago I went down a rabbit hole researching "Europe's toughest trail" and couldn't stop
I've never done the GR20 but I've been mildly obsessed with it for weeks. Started with a YouTube video, ended up reading trip reports until 2am.
A few things that genuinely surprised me:
**The history is wilder than I expected.** The route was basically sketched out by one guy in the 1950s from an armchair, then another guy turned it into a real trail in the 60s by just... walking it through the mountains with paint. The villages around it were depopulating. The trail essentially saved them economically.
**The Cirque de la Solitude used to exist.** A narrow chasm with chains and metal rungs, considered the trail's most iconic — and most dangerous — section. In 2015 a rockslide killed 7 hikers there. The official route was rerouted afterward. I had no idea. Most of the content online still romanticises it as if it's still accessible.
**The FKT numbers are absurd.** 180 km, \~28,000m of elevation. Kilian Jornet ran it in under 33 hours in 2009. It's been pushed down to around 30h since. Most people take 10–16 days. Let that gap sink in.
**June is the sweet spot** apparently — long days, manageable heat, snow mostly cleared from the northern cols. But "mostly" is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
I wrote up the history and the physical reality of the trail if anyone wants more context: gettrail.quest/blog/gr20 https://gettrail.quest/blog/gr20
Has anyone here actually done it? Curious how the reality matched the reputation.
#activity #hiking
I've never done the GR20 but I've been mildly obsessed with it for weeks. Started with a YouTube video, ended up reading trip reports until 2am.
A few things that genuinely surprised me:
**The history is wilder than I expected.** The route was basically sketched out by one guy in the 1950s from an armchair, then another guy turned it into a real trail in the 60s by just... walking it through the mountains with paint. The villages around it were depopulating. The trail essentially saved them economically.
**The Cirque de la Solitude used to exist.** A narrow chasm with chains and metal rungs, considered the trail's most iconic — and most dangerous — section. In 2015 a rockslide killed 7 hikers there. The official route was rerouted afterward. I had no idea. Most of the content online still romanticises it as if it's still accessible.
**The FKT numbers are absurd.** 180 km, \~28,000m of elevation. Kilian Jornet ran it in under 33 hours in 2009. It's been pushed down to around 30h since. Most people take 10–16 days. Let that gap sink in.
**June is the sweet spot** apparently — long days, manageable heat, snow mostly cleared from the northern cols. But "mostly" is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
I wrote up the history and the physical reality of the trail if anyone wants more context: gettrail.quest/blog/gr20 https://gettrail.quest/blog/gr20
Has anyone here actually done it? Curious how the reality matched the reputation.
#activity #hiking
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