Trekking in the Alps. Kev Reynolds

INTRODUCTION

      The breathtaking sight of Mont Blanc on the final stage of the Gran Paradiso Alta Via (photo: Gillian Price)

      Trekking in the Alps is immensely satisfying. The physical challenge is part of it, but so too is the sense of achievement on gaining a lofty pass that may have taken several hours to reach. Then there are the views, the ever-changing panoramas, the distant horizon of peaks and ridges that lure you on day after day. Not just mountains, but all the essential features that build a mountain landscape – individual rocks, boulders and screes, the glaciers and snowfields and torrents of snowmelt. There are lakes and waterfalls, meadows full of flowers; marmots that fill the silences with their shrill calls, chamois roaming the high places, ibex too, and the noisy choughs that haunt passes and summits alike.

      They may be the world’s best-known, most comprehensively mapped, catalogued and photographed mountains of all, but the Alps still have the power to excite and surprise with every visit.

      Although trekking may seem a fairly modern concept, in truth it’s centuries old, for in 1767 the Genevese scientist Horace Bénédict de Saussure made the first of three circular tours of Mont Blanc; in 1837 James David Forbes from Edinburgh wandered across the Dolomites, and two years later made a complete circuit of Monte Viso and followed in Saussure’s footsteps around Mont Blanc. Both were men of science, but a good part of the inspiration for their travels was not just scientific enquiry, but a love of mountains and the joy of wandering among them. ‘The scenery is stupendous,’ wrote Forbes in his account of the mountains of Dauphiné.

      When our Victorian forefathers were laying the foundations of mountaineering, they were divided into two types: ‘centrists’, who based themselves in Chamonix, Zermatt or Grindelwald, for example, and set out to climb neighbouring peaks, returning after each ascent to the comfort of their valley hotel; and ‘ex-centrists’ – men like Edward Whymper (who made the first ascent of the Matterhorn), AW Moore, John Ball and Francis Fox Tuckett – who strode across the Alps from region to region, crossing peaks, passes and glaciers with astonishing vigour. Whymper’s restless energy is seldom mentioned, but his classic Scrambles Amongst the Alps is far more than an account of winning summits, for it describes the travails and triumphs of finding a way from one district to the next, from which we discover that in order to get from Briançon to Grenoble in 1860 it was necessary to ‘set out at 2pm … for a seventy-five mile walk’, which he achieved in a day and a half. As for Tuckett, between 1856 and 1874 he crossed no less than 376 passes and climbed 165 peaks. And all this before a chain of mountain huts provided accommodation, and the few hotels or inns that did exist outside the main centres offered little comfort.

      Sometimes these Alpine pioneers sought refuge in the home of a local priest, but the accommodation on offer was not always what they might have hoped for, as Alfred Wills discovered when he arrived in Valtournanche in the summer of 1852. ‘In each of the side rooms,’ he explained, ‘were a bed, a chair, a table made of an unshaped block of wood on three legs, and a pie dish. The floors were so thick with dirt, that your boots left foot-marks as you walked across the room; and everything you touched soiled your hands. We could get scarcely anything to eat – a serious evil after eleven hours’ walk … and we went to bed hungry and tired.’

      Simple alp chalets provided an alternative. Used by dairymen during the summer months, an overnight could sometimes be found in remote locations. On their way to attempt a crossing of the Moming Pass in 1864, Whymper and Moore took advantage of a cheesemaker’s hut in the magnificent Ar Pitetta cirque above Zinal. ‘It was a hovel,’ wrote Whymper in Scrambles, ‘growing, as it were, out of the hillside; roofed with rough slabs of slaty stone; without a door or window; surrounded by quagmires of ordure, and dirt of every description.’

      The Nürnberger Hut – a substantial building (Stubai High-Level Route) (photo: Allan Hartley)

      It is no surprise then, that early Baedeker guides warned against sleeping in chalets unless absolutely necessary: ‘Whatever poetry there may be theoretically in a “fragrant bed of hay”, the cold night air piercing abundant apertures, the ringing of the cow bells, the grunting of the pigs, and the undiscarded garments, hardly conduce to refreshing slumber.’

      Being eminently ‘clubbable’ men, the Victorians got together to found the Alpine Club in 1857. Following their lead, the Austrian Alpine Club was formed in 1862, and a year later the Swiss, whose members built their first mountain hut on the Tödi in order to shorten the time needed to make an ascent of the peak. In 1868 another was erected on the Matterhorn, partly financed by Alexander Seiler of Zermatt. In its first 25 years the Swiss Alpine Club built almost 40 such huts, and by 1890 the French Alpine Club had 33 of their own. Meanwhile, the Austrian, German and Italian clubs were also busy providing overnight shelters for the growing number of visitors to their mountains.

      The majority of these huts were small and spartan and, in some instances consisted of little more than a cave with a door. Others could be described as wooden sheds whose roofs were held in place with rocks, although some were soundly constructed of timber and stone and contained a stove, an axe and a supply of firewood. A few blankets or sheepskins might be provided, plus a saucepan or two, but little more.

      But in the century or so since then, there has been a marked improvement in standards of accommodation throughout the Alpine chain. In Austria and the Italian Dolomites many of these huts are now inn-like buildings capable of sleeping a hundred visitors each night. Most have large communal dormitories, although it’s not unusual to find smaller two- or four-bedded rooms available. The majority are staffed in summer, meals and drinks are available, hot showers and drying rooms are not uncommon, and fresh provisions are often helicoptered in several times during the season.

      Large-flowered leopardsbane grows among rocks and meadows (photo: Kev Reynolds)

      Young ibex shedding its coat (photo: Hilary Sharp)

      Houseleeks spread their rosettes among the rocks (photo: Hilary Sharp)

      The willow gentian is a showy flower, often found in great clumps (photo: Kev Reynolds)

      In summer the marmot is seen in almost every district of the Alps (photo: Hilary Sharp)

      While huts have been built in just about every Alpine district, there are also gîtes d’étape, gasthofs and rustic mountain inns scattered among the valleys and hillsides, often in the most idyllic of locations. Austria, for one, has numerous charming gasthofs in its valleys, but boasts more than 1000 actual hütten, about half of which have been built by members of the Austrian or German Alpine Clubs; the rest are privately owned but open to all. The Swiss have in excess of 300, while the French, Italian and Slovenian Alpine Clubs have plenty more. Given sufficient time, energy and money, it would be possible to trek virtually from one end of the Alps to the other staying in a different mountain hut each night, unencumbered by a heavy pack and carrying just the basic essentials.

      But since few of us are able to commit ourselves to such an epic dream journey, numerous hut-to-hut tours of varying length have been developed that are immensely satisfying to contemplate and complete. Enticing the trekker along trails and crossing passes they reveal the Alps’ rich diversity, providing challenge and reward in equal measure, and as the huts themselves are invariably built in spectacular locations,