Although mountain refuges have existed in the Alps since ancient times, they started to multiply in the 19th century with the rise in popularity of alpinism. These huts vary in terms of the shelter they offer passing mountaineers but they are always in remote locations, at dizzying altitudes and accessible only by foot.
Like me, you probably picture a mountain refuge as a tumbledown stone-built building run by gnarly old hermit with a beard down to his knees, but I was surprised to find out recently that working as a refuge guardian is a role that is increasingly being filled by women.
To find out more about what it takes to live in these isolated huts and understand what attracts women to this traditionally male-dominated role, I laced up my walking boots and travelled to the Vallée des Belleville in Savoie where three out of four refuges are now run by women.
Refuge Le Nant Brun: Amandine and Violaine
My first job upon arrival in the valley was to find out what defines a mountain refuge. “A place has to be inaccessible to emergency vehicles by road for at least six months a year in order to qualify as a refuge,” Violaine, co-guardian of the Refuge Nant Brun tells me. I look out from the terrace of the traditional alpine house at the soaring green peaks above and the babbling stream below; it’s hard to imagine it as a remote outpost in winter. However, the walking route I’d taken through the woods to reach the refuge is snow-covered in winter to the extent that locals decamp from the village entirely because the road through it is an avalanche corridor.
Violaine and Amandine opened the refuge last winter. It was a tough season that involved walking with snowshoes and pulling supplies on a sledge each day. Neither did it generate enough trade. For now, the plan is to open from June to the end of September and provide refreshment and overnight stays to hikers, holidaymakers and locals.
This isn’t Violaine’s first refuge rodeo. She has worked in very remote places over the years and says she’d still be doing so if she didn’t have children. “I love waking up each morning in the mountains and the sense of remoteness,” she says. “In Courchevel, it was very far from the road and if there was accident, there was only a helicopter for rescue.”
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Violaine and Amandine take it in turns to stay overnight in Nant Brun. It’s tough to combine with family life, especially for Violaine whose husband is a shepherd and goes south with this flock for the summer months.
Amandine insists that life in a refuge is not as solitary as it sounds: “People think it’s lonely but it’s not, especially if you are on a route like the Tour de Tarentaise or the UTMB,” she reveals. “Often, you have a team and there are visitors every night so it’s quite social. “
Refuge Lac du Lou: Coralie and Marie
My senses are in overdrive when I begin my second refuge hike; the squeak of a marmot on the left, the taste of blueberries plucked from bushes to my right and the smell of wild thyme ahead. The path from Les Menuires to Lac du Lou is narrow and snakes around the mountain. It’s occasionally broken by the crossing of a wooden bridge; other times, it’s simply a scramble across a stream.
After an hour, I arrive at a beautiful stone and slate house sitting at the end of a turquoise glistening lake. Coralie and Marie are two ex-opticians who met at work in Chamonix and decided to answer the call of the mountains and run a refuge together. In winter, Lac du Lou is accessible by snowshoe, ski touring or off-piste alpine skiing from the top of the Pointe de la Masse gondola, but there’s no access by car or groomed pistes.
Before coming here, the friends worked in a very remote refuge in Switzerland. According to them, women-run places are becoming more common, even in high-mountain areas.
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I asked the friends about safety and whether they ever feel vulnerable up here at night. “We feel safe here but, to honest, we felt safer in previously more isolated refuges where the only danger was the weather,” says Marie. “Here, we sometimes hear engines of four-wheel quads or motorbikes and we don’t know who’s out there. That’s scarier than no noise at all.”
As Coralie shows me around the beautifully furnished dormitories, we talk about the skills needed to keep a refuge running for overnight stays and diners. “I think women are good at running refuges because they can do everything; it’s work that was traditionally done by women, like cleaning and cooking, so we are pretty self-sufficient really,” she says.
Refuge du Trait d’Union: Vivianne
My final refuge visit was to meet Vivianne. To reach her, I joined a night hike with a guide called Gilles to get there. We meet on the main road in a hamlet called St Marcel and walk straight up the hillside, zig-zagging through high grasses and wild flowers. It’s the golden hour when we arrive in a utopia in a clearing on the side of the hill. While I gawp at the wood-fired sauna with a view to die for, one of the group is spontaneously compelled to hug a big old gnarly tree in front of the house. “It’s powerful at the moment,” says host Vivianne, by way of introduction.
Gathering us in a circle of deckchairs around a firepit, she serves us local beer, kir and peanuts, before ushering us inside for a feast of diot sausages and crozets pasta in a bechamel sauce followed by velvety chocolate puddings and shots of génépi.
When Vivianne and her husband bought the place, it was run down. The couple decided to renovate it together. “It was only for us,” she explains, “for spending time with family and friends. It was just for that.”
In 2016, Vivianne’s husband died suddenly and for a while, all dreams of a happy retirement disappeared. With time, Vivianne returned and now she’s happy to welcome guests – skiers in winter and hikers and stargazers in summer – to her wonderful place. “That’s why I called it Trait d’Union; it means hyphen – linking my life before to my life afterwards,” she tells me.
Running a refuge is physically demanding, especially in winter when you have to manage heavy snowfall and ice, as well as all the other jobs. For Vivianne, however, it’s more than worth it. “I wanted to give sense to this place after he had gone – and I realised that welcoming people here and making sure they have a good time was a way to keep his memory alive,” she says.
Like the other female guardians I meet, Vivianne says she feels safer here in the winter when access by road is completely cut. She has her dog and a co-worker who come to help in the daytimes, and she’s happy.
She stands to clear the table. “Physically, we women may not have the strength of men, but we really know how to welcome people,” she winks. I couldn’t agree more.
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