History
The history of the GR20
Today the GR20 feels self-evident, almost a monument. Yet it is a recent trail: laid out, waymarked and equipped over just a few decades across the Corsican mountains. Here is how it was born, and why it became legendary.
The origins
A trail laid out in the 1970s
As early as 1952, Jean Loiseau, a major figure in French hiking, described part of the routes through the Corsican mountains in his « Itinéraires de la Corse ». The idea of a great traverse was in the air, but the trail we know today did not yet exist.
The GR20 was truly born in 1970, when Admiral Michel Fabrikant and his teams laid down the first waymarking, supported in particular by Guy Degos, a forestry engineer. The trail then inherited the number 20 (Corsica's former département number) and a Corsican name that says everything about its route: Fra Li Monti, « between the mountains ».
The construction
From the first refuges to the full opening
Once the route was set, everything still had to be built: refuges, footbridges, signs, infrastructure. The trail took its current form in just a few years.
1970
First white-and-red waymarking by Admiral Fabrikant and his teams, along the crest line.
1971 – 1972
The first two refuges were built (Petra Piana and Campiglione); in 1972 the Regional Nature Park of Corsica was created, covering nearly half of the island.
1975
The GR20 opened along its full length, from Calenzana in the north to Conca in the south.
The route
Why it goes that way
The GR20 does not seek the ease of the valleys: for the most part it follows Corsica's watershed line and takes up old transhumance paths, those of the shepherds and their flocks moving between the high-altitude pastures.
It is this logic of the crests that explains its punishing character. You string together cols, steep climbs and technical descents instead of skirting the obstacles. The trail hugs the relief rather than negotiating it — and that is precisely what makes it, even today, both difficult and beautiful.
Today
How it became legendary
In half a century, the GR20 has become a benchmark: often cited among the most demanding trails in Europe, it draws thousands of hikers every summer: the Park recorded around 130,000 overnight stays in 2021 across the whole route.
Its most legendary section was for a long time the Cirque de la Solitude. Stripped of its waymarking after the deadly rockfall of 2015, it is no longer part of the official itinerary, which has since been rerouted higher up, via the Pointe des Éboulis. A story in its own right, told on our variants page.
Walking the GR20 today means following waymarks set down more than fifty years ago, on shepherds' paths far older still. That, too, is the feeling you carry away from the traverse: moving through a history that is greater than you.
Sources
Where these milestones come from
These dates and historical facts are synthesised from the FFRandonnée, the Regional Nature Park of Corsica and reference sources online. Mon GR20 remains an independent personal site, not affiliated with the PNRC or the FFRandonnée: what follows is a historical overview, not an official publication.