Mountain hut

Mountains, Tyrol region, Austria]]

A mountain hut (also known as alpine hut, mountain shelter, and mountain hostel) is a building located in the mountains intended to provide food and shelter to mountaineers, climbers and hikers. Mountain huts are usually operated by a section of an Alpine Club. Most mountain huts are tended to by Alpine Club personnel throughout the mountaineering season, who prepare meals and drinks for mountaineers, similar to a restaurant, but usually with a limited selection, as it is not always easy to transport the food to the hut. Furthermore, mountain huts provide simple sleeping berths. Any mountaineer is allowed to access Alpine huts, but members of an Alpine Club usually get a discount. Some huts in more remote areas have no personnel, but mountaineers are allowed to access them.

As there is a lot of mountaineering activity in the Alps, there are a large number of Alpine club huts as well as private huts along the mountaineering paths. These huts are categorised according to their location and facilities and may have beds or a mattress room (Matratzenlager) for overnight stays. They may also offer discounts for members of the various Alpine clubs. One cannot necessarily count on finding a similarly dense network of paths and huts in other mountain ranges.

In the United Kingdom and Ireland the tradition is of unwardened "climbing huts" providing fairly rudimentary accommodation (but superior to that of a bothy) close to a climbing ground; the huts are usually conversions (eg of former quarrymen's cottages, or of disused mine buildings), and are not open to passers-by except in emergency. Many climbing clubs in the UK have such huts in Snowdonia or in the Lake District. A well-known example is the 'Charles Inglis Clark Memorial Hut' (the 'CIC Hut') under the northern crags of Ben Nevis in Scotland - this is a purpose-built hut, high up the mountain, probably nearest in character to the Alpine huts.

In Poland mountains shelters and huts are run by PTTK - Polish Tourist Society. Most of them offer only common sleeping rooms and refreshments; no organised catering is available. Polish mountain huts are obliged by their own regulations to overnight each person who is not able to find any other place before sunset, though the conditions may be tough (eg. a mattress in hall or warm basement). The hut shall provide each tourist or hiker with free boiling water for hot drinks.

Gallery

Europe

North America

Oceania

References