The first time most people walk into a rifugio, they stand in the doorway for a moment, slightly unsure. It looks like a pub, smells like soup and wet wool, and seems to run on rules everyone else already knows. Here they are.
Arriving
Aim to arrive between three and five in the afternoon. Leave your boots and walking poles in the boot room by the door: inside, it’s socks, slippers or the hut’s plastic clogs. Then find the guardian, the gestore, at the bar. They’ll check your booking, give you a bed and tell you when dinner is.
Tell the hut if you’ll be late. Guardians track who hasn’t arrived and will call rescue if you go missing. We give you every hut’s number for exactly this.
Dinner and breakfast
Dinner is usually at seven, at long shared tables. Expect three courses: soup or pasta, a main with polenta or potatoes, and a slice of strudel or a panna cotta. You’ll be seated with strangers. By the second course they’ll be friends.
“The best view on the Alta Via is the dining room at Lagazuoi at half past seven.”
A walker on our September departure, 2025
Breakfast runs from about half past six. It’s bread, jam, butter, muesli and coffee, sometimes eggs. Fill your water bottles now: some huts sell bottled water only.
Sleeping
Dormitories take four to twelve people on mattresses with blankets and pillows. You bring the sleeping-bag liner: it’s required, and huts sell them if you forget. Quiet hours begin at ten. Pack tonight’s things in a stuff sack so you’re not rustling plastic bags at five in the morning.
- Earplugs, always.
- A head torch with a red-light mode.
- Never take the bunk by the window unless you like fresh air at 2,700 m.
Paying
On our trips, beds and dinners are paid. You pay at the bar for lunch, drinks, showers and packed lunches. More huts take cards each year, but signal fails, so carry cash: about €50 a day is plenty.
Above all, be kind to the people who run the huts. Everything you eat arrived by cable lift, tractor or helicopter, and the guardian probably started work at five.
