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 an Alpine Club or some organization dedicated to hiking or mountain recreation.
Mountain huts usually provide simple sleeping berths, and personnel may prepare meals and drinks for mountaineers. Mountain huts usually allow anybody to access their facilities. Some huts in more remote areas have no personnel, but mountaineers are still allowed to access them.
Mountain huts have been built for many years, some as early as the 1880s.
Huts used as Forest Service guard shacks and sheep herding shelters were built in Colorado in the 1940s. These huts cut through now what is the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness. In the United States, New Hampshire, the Carter Notch Hut was built in 1904 and is still in use today.
Famous quotes containing the words mountain and/or hut:
“The mountain may be approached more easily and directly on horseback and on foot from the northeast side, by the Aroostook road, and the Wassataquoik River; but in that case you see much less of the wilderness, none of the glorious river and lake scenery, and have no experience of the batteau and the boatman’s life.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There is hardly a pioneer’s hut which does not contain a few odd volumes of Shakespeare. I remember reading the feudal drama of Henry V for the first time in a log cabin.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)