my breath away, if I’d had any to spare, and it made all the effort to get there worthwhile.
In no hurry now, I sat on my rucksack in the snow to savour the moment, squinting in the sunlight and soaking in the view before descending at snail’s pace, content with the knowledge that before long I’d be able to relax with a cold beer in hand, the promise of a refreshing shower, a bed for the night, a three-course meal, and maybe a carafe of red wine to celebrate – not in some fancy resort hotel, but in a mountain hut set beside a glacier.
A couple of hundred metres below the col, the hut was even better than I’d hoped. Sturdy, spacious and welcoming, Cabane de Panossière stands on the right-hand lateral moraine of the Corbassière glacier in a world of its own. It has no neighbours, other than the rock, snow and ice of the mountains that drew me and the other visitors to it, and in the warmth of that bright summer’s day it had everything I could possibly want or need.
Given a mattress in a room overlooking the glacier, and after satisfying a long day’s mountain thirst with more overpriced cans of beer than were good for me, at 7pm that evening, along with 20 or so other climbers and walkers, I was working my way through a large plate of tender meat and spaghetti when suddenly all conversation ceased. In its place came the clatter of cutlery on china as everyone grabbed their cameras and rushed outside.
There at the head of a vast glacial highway, the Grand Combin was turning scarlet before our very eyes, its summit snows reflecting the dying sun in a riot of alpenglow, while a 1200m cascade of ice disappeared into a rising cauldron of shadow. It was one of those sights that none of us who saw it will ever forget, yet it was just one of many that the hut provided at no extra cost.
‘the Grand Combin was turning scarlet before our very eyes’
Night fell not long after, leaving each one of us marooned in a world of our own – a world centred on a solitary building astride a wall of moraine among alpine giants. Peace settled; there were no alien sounds, just the occasional clunk and slither of a rock falling onto ice. It was no more threatening than the pulse beat of mountains at rest.
At 2am I slid off my bunk, tiptoed to the window and counted the stars, some of which settled on creamy summits more than 1500m above me. In the darkness, the great peaks watched over Cabane de Panossière and its guests, all of whom – except for me – were sleeping, unaware of the beauty of the scene beyond the window.
As for me, there was nowhere else I’d rather be, for my simple dormitory was the ultimate room with a view.
Huts for all
Like thousands of others scattered across the alpine chain, the Panossière Hut (www.cabane-fxb-panossiere.ch/en) provides overnight accommodation for walkers, trekkers, climbers and ski mountaineers, and, in common with the vast majority, is located amid magnificent scenery. This one, at 2645m in the Pennine Alps of canton Valais in Switzerland, belongs to the Bourgeoisie de Bagnes, while its predecessor, destroyed by avalanche in 1988, was owned by the Swiss Alpine Club (Schweizer Alpen-Club, SAC). It can sleep 100 in its dormitories, and is manned by a guardian (or warden) during the spring ski-touring season and for about three months in the summer, when meals, drinks and snacks are available.
That, in a nutshell, sums up a modern mountain hut. It’s a bit like a youth hostel, offering simple, reasonably priced accommodation and meals in a magical setting for visitors taking part in mountain activities. A ‘hut’ in the conventional sense it is not. There is no resemblance to a garden shed, as the word might suggest, although one of its predecessors, a simple wooden cabin built nearby in 1893, may well have been, for there were very few luxuries available in those far-off days.
Trekking group on the trail leading to the Schesaplana Hut
A few of those early mountain refuges that gave little more than rudimentary shelter still exist today, but the majority have evolved, thank goodness, into much more comfortable buildings (the most recent claiming eco-friendly credentials, with solar generators and innovative means of water purification) that provide overnight lodging with all, or most, mod cons, three- or four-course meals and an experience to remember. Every year, thousands of mountain enthusiasts from all over the world have reason to be thankful for their existence, for they’re much more than a simple home-from-home in what can sometimes be a wild and uncompromising environment. Up there, you can make contact with others who share your interests, build friendships, exchange stories and gather valuable up-to-date information about route conditions and weather forecasts from the guardians, a number of whom are also experienced mountain guides. Up there, you’re in another world, divorced from everyday concerns. Up there, mountain huts become a means of escape from one reality to another, a halfway house in which to relax during adventures ‘out there’.
OK, maybe I’m nudging towards a romantic view, for it must be admitted there are those who think less favourably of the hutting experience than I. In his introduction to 100 Hikes in the Alps, American author Harvey Edwards sets out his objections. ‘They are wonderful protection in a storm,’ he says, ‘but I’ve yet to catch up on all the nights’ sleep I’ve lost. Someone is always snoring, sneezing, singing, smoking, or getting up at 1:00am to start a climb. In season, the huts are overcrowded and often unbearable. Still, a trip to the Alps isn’t worth a schnitzel if you haven’t tried a hut at least once.’ He then goes on to recommend using a tent.
Now I like wild camping too, and bivvying alone in remote places lost above the clouds. But there’s something very special about huts, their welcome shelter and the camaraderie they inspire – especially in the Stube (common room/dining room) after a hard day in the hills, or (as Harvey Edwards implies) when a storm explodes outside. Any old port in a storm, you might think. Well, yes, but that’s only a part of it. Having had a role to play in the history of mountaineering, they’ve since become an important, you might say an essential, part of the whole alpine experience – and when I say alpine, I don’t just mean the European Alps (although that’s the focus of this book), but any high mountain region where simple lodgings have been provided for those of us who are active in the great ‘out there’ and who, like me, look forward to spending a few nights of a holiday resting somewhere up there between heaven and earth. It’s true that your sleep might be disturbed for a spell by someone snoring, but I reckon that’s a small price to pay for all the rewards on offer. And you can always use earplugs.
I’m with Chris Bonington when he says (in Mountaineer): ‘There is an anticipatory excitement in a crowded hut, in its babel of different languages, chance encounters with old acquaintances swilling wine and coffee, the packed communal bunks and the intensity of the early morning start.’
So where are these huts? Well, they can be found in just about every district of the 1200km alpine chain, stretching from the Maritime Alps above Nice, through France, Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Germany and Austria, to the lovely Julian and Karavanke mountains of Slovenia, and there are now so many of them that, given sufficient time, energy and ready cash, it would be possible to trek from one end of the range to the other and stay in a different hut each night. Some are grouped just an hour or so apart (there are in excess of two dozen in the Mont Blanc massif alone, a dozen on the flanks of Triglav in the Julian Alps, and at least eight on or around the base of the Sassolungo massif in the Dolomites), while others may be spaced 5 or 6 hours – or almost a day’s hike – from one another, so you can remain at high altitude for a week or more without the need to descend to a valley to find a bed for the night.
After a hard day on the hill, the Stube invokes a warm sense of camaraderie as strangers who share a common enthusiasm become new-found friends
Each one will be unique – not unique in the type of sleeping accommodation on offer, since they all have some form of communal, mixed-sex dormitory, while gourmet meals with beer or wine will be served as if in a valley hotel.
There are huts clinging to summits, huts wedged among the clefts of narrow mountain