Tour du Mont Blanc Refuge Planner

Check refuge (mountain hut) availability along the Tour du Mont Blanc hiking route. The app scrapes availability data from montourdumontblanc.com and independent booking systems, then presents it through a CLI and a web-based itinerary planner.

The idea is that you put all of the refuges you would be willing to stay at on any given night, than the application tries to find a combination of refuges that have availability across your entire trip. This is especially useful for the popular summer months when places open up unpredictably.

Features

• Web itinerary planner — drag-and-drop refuges into nightly groups, set a date range, and instantly see which start dates have availability across your entire trip
• CLI availability checker — check specific dates and refuges from the terminal with audio alerts when places open up
• Trip planner — save multi-day plans and monitor them for openings
• Smart distance awareness — refuges are ordered by km along the TMB, with daily distance visualization
• Automatic caching — rate-limited and cached so we don't flood the booking sites

Prerequisites

You need Python 3.11 or newer and pip (Python's package installer).

Don't have Python?

1. Go to python.org/downloads and download the latest version (3.11+).
2. Run the installer. Check the box that says "Add Python to PATH" — this is important.
3. Open a new terminal (Command Prompt on Windows, Terminal on Mac/Linux) and verify it works:

   python --version
   

   You should see something like Python 3.13.x. If you get an error, try python3 --version instead.

Windows note: If python isn't recognized after installing, close and reopen your terminal. If it still doesn't work, you may need to re-run the installer and check "Add Python to PATH."

Installation

pip install git+https://github.com/Wyko/TMBRefugeChecker.git

Or if your system uses python3:

pip3 install git+https://github.com/Wyko/TMBRefugeChecker.git

After installation, the montblanc command is available in your terminal.

Quick Start — Web UI

The easiest way to use the app is through the web interface:

montblanc web

This opens a browser at http://127.0.0.1:8000 with a drag-and-drop itinerary planner where you can:

1. Drag refuges from the left panel into nightly groups on the right
2. Pick a date range (presets like "Summer 2026" or custom dates)
3. Set min places — only show dates with at least this many beds available
4. Click Check — the app finds all start dates where every night in your trip has availability
5. Save/Load your selections so you don't have to rebuild your itinerary each time

Options:

• --port — change the port (default: 8000)
• --no-browser — start the server without opening a browser

CLI Usage

All commands start with montblanc. Run montblanc --help for full guidance.

List all refuges

montblanc list

Shows every refuge with its ID and name:

Found 43 refuges:
32400:   Auberge Gîte Bon Abri
32406:   Auberge Mont-Blanc
32394:   Auberge des Glaciers
90001:   Refuge du Lac Blanc
90002:   Rifugio Elena
...

Check availability

montblanc check <date> <refuges...>

Check one or more refuges on a specific date. Refuges can be partial names or IDs — the app fuzzy-matches them.

montblanc check 2026-07-01 "Bon Abri" Glaciers

# Also supports other date formats
montblanc check 2026.07.01 32400
montblanc check 01/07/2026 nova soleil

Options:

• -m / --min-places — alert threshold (default: 3). Beeps when a refuge has at least this many places.
• -s / --silent — suppress audio alerts

The command runs in a loop, rechecking every 5 minutes until you press Ctrl+C.

Plan a trip

Build a multi-day plan and monitor all dates at once.

# Add nights to your plan
montblanc plan day 2026-07-03 "lac blanc"
montblanc plan day 2026-07-04 "Rifugio Elena"
montblanc plan day 2026-07-11 "de la Nova" Soleil

# View your plan
montblanc plan show

# Check availability for every night in the plan
montblanc plan check

Options for plan day / plan check / plan show:

• -p / --path — path to the plan file (default: ~/.montblanc/default_plan.json)

Options for plan check:

• -m / --min-places — alert threshold (default: 3)
• -s / --silent — suppress audio alerts

General Notes

This script has plenty of caching and rate-limiting built in so we don't flood the websites and make them angry. Don't mess with the rate limits, or this will end up broken very quickly.

I haven't extensively checked the distance between huts that is shown in the web GUI; I pulled that data from another website. Use at your own risk, and submit a pull request in case that's not correct.