is made easy with the aid of one or more téléphériques (cable cars). Few trekkers’ huts have such means of access, but most are approached by decent, well-marked trails and are no more than a few hours’ walk apart. Facilities are usually pretty good too, enabling you to make a tour of a week or two with a backpack containing little more than a change of clothing, a sheet sleeping bag, head torch and travel towel, leaving you to enjoy the trek without being weighed down by non-essentials.
A steadily expanding network of refuges across the alpine range has enabled numerous exciting day walks and multi-day treks to be tackled by walkers of varying abilities and levels of fitness. Practically every district now claims a hut-to-hut tour that explores some of its finest scenery, encouraging newcomers to discover the mountains in all their rich variety. There are classic routes with worldwide fame, like the 10–12-day Tour of Mont Blanc (TMB) and the fortnight-long Walker’s Haute Route from Chamonix to Zermatt (C–Z), and countless other great treks that may be less well known but are just as rewarding, with often uncrowded huts in the most amazing locations among the Alps of France, Switzerland, Austria, the Italian Dolomites and Slovenia‘s Julian Alps.
Chamanna Coaz at the head of Val Roseg in the Bernina Alps
The Coaz Hut (Chamanna Coaz, (www.coaz.ch/en) in the Bernina Alps is a prime example. Originally built with climbers in mind, it is now regularly visited by walkers based in Pontresina or one of the nearby Engadine villages, and also by trekkers making the 9-day Tour of the Bernina. Standing close to the Roseg glacier at 2610m, some 500m above a glacial lake at the head of Val Roseg, an overnight there is a very special experience and one I’d wanted to make for many years. Despite having visited the hut several times since I first worked in the district back in the late 1960s, it wasn’t until I was walking the Tour of the Bernina in 2014 that I finally had the opportunity to actually sleep there. It was early in the season and the warden was still digging a pathway through the snow when I arrived. But everything was fully operational, and as that summer happened to be the hut’s 50th anniversary, anyone staying who’d been born the same year it was opened was charged at 1964 prices. Alas, I was too old for that. But at least I could claim a discount with my Alpine Club membership card.
Despite there being room for 80, I was one of only eight hikers staying (four from Sweden, two Swiss women who’d previously worked at the hut, and two of us from the UK), so there was plenty of space in the dormitories. We ate our meals together with the lights of Pontresina twinkling in the distance, to the sound of last winter’s snow sliding off the roof.
On some of the more popular multi-day routes, something approaching a family atmosphere builds among trekkers, for after a few nights spent in huts and gîtes d’étape (walkers’ hostels) along the way, you come to recognise one another, look out for a familiar face during
‘long-lasting friendships have been created from a night shared in a mountain hut’
the day, and in the evening swap stories around the dining room table. That sociability can be one of the most rewarding aspects of the hutting and trekking experience, and a number of long-lasting friendships have been created from a night shared in a mountain hut.
Take Rifugio Bonatti (www.rifugiobonatti.it) on the Tour of Mont Blanc. Named after the great Italian mountaineer Walter Bonatti, it stands on a sloping pasture on the south side of the Italian Val Ferret, with a direct view of Mont Blanc in the west and the Grandes Jorasses almost within spitting distance across the valley. Built in 1998 and privately owned, it can sleep 85 in dormitories and family-sized rooms decorated with Bonatti’s photographs, and is known for the excellent facilities that make it one of the most popular huts on the tour. What’s more, one of the best routes of approach (via the Mont de la Saxe option) is downhill – something of a rarity in the Alps.
The dining room is light and spacious, with big windows that exploit a wonderful panoramic view taking in much that you’ll have gazed on during your hike to get there. A few years ago, my wife Min and I spent a night at the rifugio, as we often do, when checking the route and accommodation facilities for a new edition of my Tour of Mont Blanc guidebook. When the guardian sat us down for dinner that evening, we found ourselves at a table with trekkers from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the US, South Africa and the UK, most of whom we’d been leap-frogging along the trail over the previous 5–6 days, egging each other on with cheerful comments. Now I noticed that several of them had copies of my book held open, and were discussing both the day’s route and my descriptions of it. They had no idea that the author, who preferred to remain anonymous, was sitting among them, but we enjoyed the light-hearted banter that crossed international boundaries, and shared a common experience not only of the route, but of our communal home for the night. Years later, we still have regular contact with one of those trekkers from the States, exchanging trail tales via letter and email, after he’d discovered my name by accident a few days after we’d left Bonatti.
Overlooking a tiny lake, the shingle-walled Bremer Hut belongs to the Bremen Section of the German Alpine Club
On another occasion we were working our way round Austria‘s lovely Stubai Alps when we spent a night at the Bremer Hut (www.bremerhuette.at). Midway through our meal, the hut warden relayed a message he’d just received by telephone from Wales, to say that one of our fellow trekkers had that very day become a grandfather for the first time. A bottle of schnapps appeared at the table, and we all drank a toast to ‘granddad’! After that it was party time.
What to pack for hutting
I once led a two-centre walking holiday in the Alps, staying in hotels in each centre, but linking them with a short hut-to-hut trek. On every walk, one of the clients carried a huge backpack as though he was on a three-month Himalayan expedition. Nine-tenths of his load was included just in case. And nine-tenths of his load returned home with him unused. On a fortnight’s trek in the Alps, staying in manned huts overnight, anything more than essentials will be unnecessary overload. A small, lightweight pack leaves the trekker free to enjoy the experience without stress or strain.
Manned huts
Here’s a suggestion of what to take when using manned huts in summer:
trekking poles
lightweight waterproof jacket and overtrousers
fleece jacket/sweater
complete change of clothes
sheet sleeping bag
head torch
lightweight towel
minimum toiletries
sunscreen
water bottle
map and compass
first-aid kit
mobile phone
Unmanned huts
In more remote districts, where huts may not be manned, all the above will be needed, plus:
sleeping bag
camping
