(all-in-one knife, fork and spoon)
mug
food
candles
toilet paper
A number of unmanned alpine huts have cooking facilities, crockery and cutlery – but by no means all of them. Expect nothing but shelter and a few bunk beds in remote bivvy huts. If you plan to use unmanned huts in winter, you’re in a different ball game.
Huts for climbers
Huts used almost exclusively by climbers are often more spartan and less comfortable than those on major trekking routes, and some of their approaches can be long, extremely steep and sometimes hazardous. Burdened with rucksacks full of equipment, it’s no wonder that climbers often consider getting to their chosen overnight base as a necessary grind to be suffered rather than enjoyed.
This is particularly true of older huts erected for the alpine pioneers, especially some of those placed in remote and seemingly inaccessible locations. For example, in 1884, in a lofty position on the graceful and isolated Monte Disgrazia in the Bregaglia Alps, Italian cartographers erected a small hut, Capanna Maria, which they presented to the Italian Alpine Club (Club Alpino Italiano, CAI). Two years later, it was visited by the Engadine guide Christian Klucker, who described it in his autobiography Adventures of an Alpine Guide as ‘a simple wooden shed measuring about ten feet in length, and a little more than six feet in width. A small bench, capable of seating four persons, had been fixed at the side towards the mountain. The inventory consisted of: 4 blankets, 1 small spirit-cooker with saucepan, 4 cups, and a few soup-spoons.’ Of the four blankets, two were dry and fit for use, while the others were frozen to the bench. Speculating how long it would last, he was not surprised to find that by 1888 wind and storm had reduced the hut to ruins.
That was an extreme case, but access was the key. Huts built in the valleys or on lower slopes that were accessible to walkers and mountaineers of modest ambition were understandably of a much higher standard than those lodged in more challenging locations. Up there, far from roads or tracks, until comparatively recently, huts provided by the Alpine Clubs were still little more than basic lodgings, patronised by men and women with cracked and blistered skin who carried ropes, slept on communal mattresses, and rose long before dawn.
One of those women was Dorothy Pilley, who came to the Mont Blanc range in 1920 and had her first experience of a real mountain hut when she arrived at the Couvercle (https://refugeducouvercle.jimdo.com), which she found to be crowded in every corner. ‘I had never seen so many tramp-like figures of all nationalities – ragged, dirty and unshaven – as were lolling about the platform, smoking and gossiping, when we trudged up the wooden steps towards them.’
Describing what she found there in her classic memoir, Climbing Days, she wrote: ‘Through the crowd I penetrated into the dark interior of what was evidently an eating- and sleeping-room in one…A partition split off a space at one end the size of a small bathroom. This was the hut gardien’s sanctum, but so great was the crowd that, for a consideration, he had turned it over to the only two other women there, and suggested that I should arrange with them to share it…Seeing that the men were sleeping that night on their sides on the floor of the main room, and even some had to sleep outside in great cold, I thought myself very lucky.’
Despite this unpromising introduction, the Couvercle experience did nothing to put her off, and she came to develop a taste for hut life, describing it as ‘that queer existence in between the luxuries of low, well-found camping and the high bivouacs of the pioneers.’ She went on to explain to the uninitiated that there would be a pail with which to collect water from a spring or, one drop at a time, from the recesses of a crevasse. And she described eating by the light of a candle off a bare table stained with use; and sleeping side by side on mattresses stuffed with straw. Lest such privation should put her readers off, she conjured up the romance of those ‘golden hours when, thousands of feet above the rest of the world, you can look out at evening from your nest upon mountains that then seem peculiarly your own.’ It was for moments like these that men and women were prepared to accept the privations of a night or two marooned above the clouds.
The modern Gleckstein Hut (www.gleckstein.ch) is a far cry from the short-lived Capanna Maria on the Disgrazia, or the old Couvercle refuge with its magnificent views in the heart of the Mont Blanc range. Serving climbers tackling the Wetterhorn above Grindelwald, the Gleckstein Hut not only claims a spectacular location high above a glacier gorge at 2317m, but is surprisingly roomy and with decent facilities that include showers and four-course evening meals. Despite its location and the exposed nature of its approach, it is a large building with 80 places, originally built in 1904 as a hotel. At the time, there were ambitious plans to create a four-stage passenger cableway to the summit of the Wetterhorn, and one of the intermediate stations was to have been built close to where the hut stands today. But with the outbreak of World War I, the enterprise was abandoned and with few visitors the hotel closed in 1916. Four years later it was taken over by the Burgdorf section of the SAC to serve as the Gleckstein Hut.
Originally built as a hotel, the Gleckstein Hut in Switzerland has a fine view of the Schreckhorn
Although its original aim was to provide accommodation for climbers, like so many other alpine huts the Gleckstein has become a popular destination for adventurous walkers and is suggested as an optional there-and-back stage for trekkers tackling the Tour of the Jungfrau Region. One of the reasons for this popularity – apart from the attraction of the hut itself – is the comparatively short (3-hour) but spectacular approach walk, which cuts along the precipitous wall of the Upper Grindelwald glacier’s gorge. Narrow and exposed in places, it is safeguarded by fixed cables, at one point passes beneath a waterfall, and has exciting views throughout. On one of my visits, I sat on a rock halfway along the gorge wall and listened to the sounds of an alpenhorn echoing from one side of the valley to the other. The following morning, I opened the hut door to find half a dozen ibex licking salt from the balcony wall.
Huts for watching wildlife
A tough 5-hour climb to reach a remote hut for a sighting of a solitary ibex (see ‘Where ibex roam’) may be a bit extreme, but I’ve also studied from close quarters a dozen or more of these stocky yet incredibly agile creatures in the autumn rut just below the summit of Piz Languard. This walkers’ mountain high above Pontresina is served by the simple 24-bed Georgy Hut (www.georgy-huette.ch), lodged near the top at 3202m, with an extensive panoramic view dominated by the snowy giants of Piz Palü and Piz Bernina across the valley.
Despite having a reasonable path right to the summit, Piz Languard still involves a steep ascent of over 1450m, so it’s good to know that not far from here a comparatively easy 3½-hour walk goes from the Engadine village of Zernez to the log-cab-
‘Gleckstein has become a popular destination for adventurous walkers’
in-like Chamanna Cluozza (www.nationalpark.ch) in the heart of the Swiss National Park, with virtually guaranteed views of red and roe deer, chamois, marmot and ibex along the way. A walk of similar length from Cogne – some of it on an old mule track in Italy’s Gran Paradiso National Park – leads to Rifugio Vittorio Sella (www.rifugiosella.com), one of the best places in all the Alps from which to study wildlife in comfort. Of an evening, scores of ibex and chamois may be seen grazing near the converted stables that make up this 150-bed hut, used by trekkers following
