Bonus Blog: Huts, Rifugios, and other Alpine Hideouts

Jess and I have just settled into an apartment in Prague for the coming week and I need to write up our experiences in Munich and hiking around Bavaria, but I thought I’d take a minute to answer a question Nirshan asked about the “huts” in the Alps. It’s a good question, because there is quite a wide range. I’m not a total expert, but I’ll base this on a dozen days hiking in the Swiss Alps (mostly stayed in hotels, only 3 “huts”), 8 days in the Valle d’Aosta (4 huts), and 10 days in the Dolomites (8 huts + many others visited).

First of all, let’s be clear what they aren’t: these huts aren’t “bivouacs.” Those exist in the mountains and are generally places without staff, no heat, no running water, just some beds in a sheltered setting. Those are generally in very remote areas at high altitude, often places where serious mountaineers might sleep before tackling a high peak early in the morning. A century ago, they looked a bit like this…

Nowadays, they are maintained by the Club Alpino Italiano and look a bit more like this. We found a couple of people hanging out at the nearby lake for the afternoon.

OK. So, if bivouacs are out, what are these places? First of all, I use the words hut and rifugio interchangeably because, well, they’re kinda interchangeable. For instance, the last place we stayed in the Dolomites was named, in Italian, Rifugio Comici, but in German it was known as Zsigmondyhütte. Others are more simply Rifugio Puez or Puezhütte. So, Italians call them rifugios, Germans huts. But Nirshan asked if they’re more like hotels. The answer is both yes and no with a lot of room in between.

Now, let’s be clear, on one end of our alpine hiking experience are actual hotels we’ve stayed in–fairly frequently in Switzerland, some in Aosta, and only once in the Dolomites–because a lot of the trails are set up to be about a day-long hike from one valley to the next. But, some of the huts are just a bit shy of being actual hotels. What separates them?

Location: most of the alpine huts are pretty far from any town. Many of them (more in the Dolomites than elsewhere) have dirt roads that make them accessible. Some of these dirt roads are for tourists, most are just for hut staffers or park rangers, and a few are only accessible with OHVs or tractors. And, of course, a number of huts have no roads nearby, in which case they get resupplied by helicopter, horse, or just sheer human labor. The locations are all stunning, to say the least.

Here is a range of locations from Pederu (right at the end of a paved road with a bus stop) to Cuney (a long hike away from the nearest farm which was at the end of a rough dirt road). In between are Friedrich August (accessible by patrons via dirt road, and only 20min walk from a major road with busses, etc.), Fodora Vedla (accessible to staff by dirt road), Frassati (a short hike from the nearest farm at the end of a dirt road), Comici (at least an hour’s walk from nearest road), and Puez (a good day’s hike from the valley, but accessible by helicopter).

While we’re on location, here’s an image from possibly the coolest hut we ever stayed in, a new state-of-the-art one in Switzerland, hanging right over a ginormous glacier.

Facilities: As an example, while most huts have potable water (a few don’t), and most have showers (some are pretty basic), only about 2/3rds of them have hot water in those showers, and for many of those you have to pay between 2 and 5 euros for 3 minutes of hot water. And sometimes, that hot water isn’t that hot. (shiver) Some places have giant “sink rooms” with a dozen sinks, and others have a little sink in each bathroom. Some have cell service because they overlook populated valleys, others are too far off in the mountains. Some explicitly say “no wifi – enjoy each other and the nature” while others provide wifi to guests and patrons free of charge. Varies widely.

Personal Space: the most luxurious hut we stayed in did have a double bed for us, but we still had a shared bathroom that was only accessible by climbing down a stairway that was actually more like a ladder. That was Rifugio Friedrich August. Other than that, we only had two other hut experiences where we had a private room, and both of those had two twin beds. More common are rooms with 4, 6, or more beds, usually bunk beds, and often in large dorm rooms. (Many of the huts have both small rooms–with 4 beds or so–and large dorm rooms available. Prices may vary.)

Here you can see a range of rooms we stayed in across the Dolomites, from elegant Friedrich August, to private but small spaces in Lavarella and Lagazuoi, to the giant bunk rooms of the more isolated Puez Hut. Note that Lavarella was the only place we ever had a sink in our own room–that was an unexpected luxury.

^{A quick aside: sleeping in large dorm rooms and eating dinner indoors in the huts definitely has been the most COVID-risky activity we’ve engaged in. The good news is that in Italy everyone is required to be vaccinated or have a recent negative test before being in any shared air space like that. The bad news is that those credentials weren’t always checked. But, we do think that the consistent advertisement of government regulations and the emails from the huts saying those things were required probably made these reasonably safe. (Also, case rates in most of Europe are lower than most of the US, so that’s good.)}

The huts also vary greatly in their function. Some of the most remote ones (like Rifugio Cuney, where we stayed in the Valle d’Aosta), are pretty basic, have only large dorms, and serve simple filling meals, cooked by whatever random 20-something-year-olds they found to staff the places. On the other end, some of the places in the Dolomites have lots of small or private rooms, very busy bars and restaurants, and a wide variety of foods available, some even with a bit of gourmet flair. As I mentioned previously, a lot of them have hoppin’ lunch-time scenes, especially if they are within a few hours hike of a decent parking area–I mean, what better way to spend the day than a decent hike with a nice lunch and a cool drink in the middle, right? Lavarella even has their own brewery, advertised as being the highest elevation one in the Dolomites.

Here’s a couple of examples of the fancier dishes we got at Rifugio Alpe di Tires. These are just part of a typical meal with primi (often soup or pasta), secondi (usually meat-based), and dessert (we grew to really enjoy panna cotta).

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So, there’s really no one answer to what the huts are like. There’s just too much variation. But, I will say that I really do appreciate their existence. Carrying a 15-pound pack beats a 30+ -pound backpacking pack any day. I do miss the isolation one gets when backpacking, but I also really enjoy having a comfortable bed, a toilet, and an occasional shower. And, the hut crowds are fun. We’ve chatted with folks from all over the world at various huts, from fellow Californians to a couple of Italian guys who lived only an hour’s drive away from the Tre Cime. One of my favorite experiences was trying to watch a World Cup soccer game (back in 2018) on one kids’ computer because he had just enough cell service to set up a hot spot…

I hope this helped answer that question. Feel free to throw more my way and I’ll answer in the comments as best I can. More on Germany soon…

EDIT: I realized that I left out one other crucial distinction. It’s been bothering me, and evidently comments get closed after a while (I need to look into that setting), so I’m just posting this here…

Most of the rifugios require that you bring a “sleep sack.” These are basically thin silk sleeping bags that serve as your sheets for the night. They fold up into a tiny pouch about the size of a mango. The rifugios provide blankets, but they aren’t washed between uses, so your sleep sack protects you from other people’s germs and such. But, some of the fancier, more hotel-like, places provide sheets so you don’t need a sleep sack. So, that’s another thing.