Atlas Mountains
Canadian Rockies
Caucasus
Corsica
Himalaya
Picos de Europa
Pyrenees
Southern Alps
Tatras
Appendix A: Useful contacts
Appendix B: Directory of alpine huts
Appendix C: Glossary for alpine trekkers
Appendix D: Further reading
The mountain hut – an outlook on another world
From the Col de la Chavière there are spectacular views north towards the Grande Casse and Mont Blanc on a clear day (Photo: Jonathan Williams)
Seen from Cabane de Panossière, the Grand Combin rises above the Corbassière glacier
The solid-looking Brèche de Roland refuge in the Cirque de Gavarnie (French Pyrenees)
Introduction
A mountain hut is a purpose-built refuge situated at some strategically high place in the mountains so that one or more peaks are readily accessible from it. It may vary in size from a simple bivouac shelter to something resembling a small hotel in size and facilities.
This quote, taken from Walt Unsworth’s Encyclopaedia of Mountaineering (1992), describes the original use for which huts were built, but it tells only part of the story. With the remarkable increase in outdoor activity since it was written, huts have had to evolve, and today there must be as many walkers and trekkers as there are climbers who choose to stay in them.
Over several decades of activity I’ve visited or stayed in hundreds of mountain huts (otherwise known as a cabane, capanna or chamanna, dom and koca, Hütte, refuge or rifugio), not just in the Alps, but also in the Pyrenees, Morocco, Russia and the high Himalaya, where they are known by other names, and I’ve come to appreciate the sheer variety and sometimes quirky nature of such dwellings lodged in a remote corner of the mountains far from the familiar everyday world. Here, it’s possible to be alone, if I wish, or be drawn into the babble of camaraderie to share a love of wild places with other like-minded individuals.
If you’re already familiar with the hut system, you’ll know that they are more than just shelters in which to pass the night – unless that’s all you want of them, that is. They can be meeting places for climbers seeking a partner to tackle a particular route. They can be staging posts for trekkers on a multi-day tour. Or they can be somewhere to visit on a day’s hike there-and-back from a valley base; somewhere to stop for lunch, perhaps, to sit outside in the sunshine, enjoy the view, and then move on.
During my years of guiding mountain holidays in the Alps and elsewhere, I found that clients always seemed to enjoy best the days when we visited huts, although many would openly admit to a lack of ‘courage’ to stay in one unless they had a friend to show them how to go about it.
Aiguille de la Tsa and the Bertol-Veisivi wall, seen from Cabane des Aiguilles Rouges
Courage seems a strange word to use in relation to something as simple as spending a night in a mountain hut, especially coming from folk who would think nothing of checking in at a three- or four-star resort hotel. But to them, huts were foreign, exotic dwellings reserved for those with experience and who were therefore assumed to hold the key to some secret world that exists among high mountains. There was an unspoken mystique about huts, secrets that only those ‘in the know’ were privy to. Huts were not for ‘ordinary’ mountain walkers.
Of course, that’s nonsense!
Mountain huts are for everyone. Well, that’s not strictly true, I’ll admit, for some are literally out of reach, sited like some lofty eyrie inaccessible to most mountain walkers. Take, for example, the old Tour Rouge refuge in the Mont Banc massif, whose approach route was described by Hermann Buhl in Nanga Parbat Pilgrimage as taking him up ‘a vertical, smooth crack’, while the hut itself was little more than ‘a prehistoric wooden shelter…consisting of three boarded walls, a corrugated iron roof and a plank floor.’
Not many ‘ordinary’ mountain walkers would consider tackling that route. Nor would they be likely to hanker after spending a night in such a dwelling, which is just as well, perhaps, for that quote dates from the 1950s, and the Tour Rouge refuge no longer exists.
But countless other huts do exist, and in places accessible to practically anyone who’s physically active and prepared to put a bit of effort into reaching them – huts in the most remarkable places, huts with stars for neighbours, with views that remain with you for ever.
This book tells you a bit about them, shows you what and where they are, and how they have evolved from little more than the most primitive of shelters. For the uninitiated, it explains who owns them, how to use them and what facilities to expect. It shows how the hutting experience is not confined to Europe, but has spread worldwide. And it also describes a few favourite huts and a selection of hut-to-hut routes to widen your alpine horizons.
In unravelling some of the mystery, I trust this book illustrates the way in which mountain huts can be truly sociable places in which to spend a night or two in the most magical of locations, to enjoy wild nature at its very best, with spectacular views and a peace unknown in the valleys.
Why not try one, next time you’re in the Alps?
1 Rooms with a view
Amid the rude elements of nature, rock, snow and ice, the hut is a life-giving oasis.
(Herbert Maeder, The Mountains of Switzerland)
All morning the trail had gained and lost so much height that I seemed to be getting nowhere in a hurry, when at the foot of yet another steep descent the way divided, offering an escape route into the valley. Having been on the go for 5 hours and with at least another 2½ hours ahead of me (if the guardian at last night’s hut at the head of Val de Bagnes was to be believed), I was almost tempted to take it – especially as close study of the map showed there were several kilometres still to cover, and more than 700m to climb in order to gain the pass whose crossing was to be the crux of the route. I felt unaccountably old and out of touch. My knees hurt and I was running short of puff. Yet 10 minutes’ rest, an over-ripe banana and half a bar of chocolate put a bit of fuel in my engine, and I set off again with optimism and energy restored.
The spectacle of alpenglow on the Combin massif is one of the rewards for a night spent at the Panossière hut
Two hours later I kicked my way up a snowfield, crossed two false tops and emerged at last on the sun-dazzling crest of the Col des Otanes. The view directly ahead revealed a wonderland of ice and snow, with Combin de Corbassière rising above its glaciers, the great dome of the Grand Combin to the south, and the Dents du Midi, around which I’d trekked