People hear “mountain hut” and picture a bothy: a stone room, a wooden platform, bring your own everything. A rifugio in the Dolomites is not that. It has a kitchen, a wine list, hot showers on a timer, and a dining room that at seven in the evening is as loud as any restaurant in Bolzano.
The half-board rate covers a bunk, dinner and breakfast. Dinner is three courses and it arrives at a set time for everybody at once, which is part of the point: you eat with whoever walked in that day.
The hut we should have booked and did not, an hour further along the ridge. Photo: Felix Mittermeier.
What is included and what is not
- Included: bunk, blanket, pillow, dinner, breakfast.
- Not included: sheets. You bring a liner, every time, and they will sell you a paper one at a mark-up if you forget.
- Not included: water, in some huts. Everything is carried or helicoptered up, and a bottle can cost what a beer costs.
- Rarely included: a working card machine.
The lights go out at ten. This is not a suggestion and nobody who has walked seven hours will be on your side about it.
Booking
Open in mid-March for the summer, full by May for August weekends, and the good ones on the high routes go first. Email, do not phone. Confirm a week before. Cancel properly if your plans change, because somebody on a four-day traverse is waiting for the bed.
