Hospitality at 6000+ feet
-based on an article by Peter Neuner in Berghauf 02/2021
translated and summerised by Irene Auerbach
“Life as a hut warden is great - you’re so FREE! You can make your own decisions, nobody to interfere, do what you enjoy doing in breath-taking scenery, and in the evenings you’ve got a captive audience for funny stories or your singing” - the words of the Steinseehütte warden in an article on the life of hut wardens in the 02/2021 edition of Bergauf.
Our parent-club, the ÖAV, owns 214 alpine huts, 85% of which are wardened (the other 15% are just small open buildings, and you have to bring your own food, often also your own bedding and cooking utensils), and for the wardens of the ca. 180 huts that are staffed, life may look slightly different. Free indeed - to serve around 1000 Kaiserschmarrn (an Austrian specialty pancake served with jam or stewed fruit) in one short season. The electricity on which to fry them costs eight times as much as it does in the valley - and how did the eggs (and the fresh salad ingredients and the beer and the tea towels and the first-aid kit …) get up there? Small tractor over very rough ground to the bottom end of the goods lift. And what if there’s a technical problem with the top end of the goods lift? Wardens not only need to be qualified to look after the small water treatment plant that deals with the toilets (pulling the flush just once can entail overheads of around €5!) and pass tests as fire wardens, but also be able to deal with a lot of repairs, ranging from the maintenance of the solar cells to that of said goods lift. Formal qualifications for ensuring the water supply is clean are also a requirement. The ÔAV offers training courses which touch on all manner of such topics, down to how to indicate, on the menus, foodstuffs that might cause allergic reactions in guests. And that’s before acting as map interpreters, route planners, meteorologists, shoulder-to-weep-on, namer of every peak in sight, explainer, mediator (noise in dormitories), cleaner (including of toilets), entertainer - in short: universal genius, 24/7 during the season. In all but the smallest huts, there are staff who need to be kept happy, with working contracts to be kept to, time off allocated. Between them, in summer, the huts of the German and the Austrian alpine clubs offer employment to some 1550 helpers. Lights out is supposed to happen at 22:00 for the guests, but it can be well gone midnight before everything is cleared up, the breakfast buffet has miraculously appeared in the dining room, and the wardens can step onto the terrace to admire the starry skies.
Prices for consumables have to be far higher than in the valley, and if they weren’t subsidised by members’ subscriptions and support from the public purse (because of the contribution mountain huts make to the general tourist trade and thus to the general economy of valley and country) they’d be higher still.
It very much takes the right sort of person - often qualified mountain guides and their families – to do the job. That right person often stays in the job for decades, often bequeathing the position to their children who grew up in and around the hut. There are some veritable hut warden dynasties, putting up with the problems, the very hard work and long hours (and the complaints about the absence of wifi) - but also appreciating the helpfulness of many guests, the praise for the food and the friendship with many mountaineers who return year after year.
Bergauf can be downloaded from www.alpenverein.at/portal/service/bergauf
More information on Steinseehütte, located in the Lechtaler Alpen in the far west of Austria, including an interview with the wardens, can be found at www.alpenverein.at/steinsee.
Buggy receiving the latest hut delivery with the service cablecar
Photos: Alpenverein/P Neuner
Jutta and Buggy are always considering the wellbeing of their guests
Return to the top of this page, or to the complete Index, or to this section's Index.
