A hotel perched 4,500m on a mountain, but there’s wifi and proper espresso
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A hotel perched 4,500m on a mount, but in that location'south wifi and proper espresso
Europe'south highest hotel, the Capanna Margherita, was once pop with well-heeled travellers, including Italia's Queen Margherita. Today it attracts a new breed of take chances seekers.
The Capanna Margherita (Margherita Hut) perches on the tiptop of a 4,554-metre peak on the Swiss-Italian border. (Photo: rifugimonterosa.information technology)
It was late July, the hottest day the United kingdom has always recorded, and I was at home packing. London was pushing past 37ºC – Paris had topped 40ºC – but I delved in the back of the loft cupboard to find downwards jackets, ski mittens and waterproofs. I was heading for a unique Italian hotel, Europe'due south highest – above the clouds and surrounded by snow all year round. Every bit I squeezed woolly hats and thermals into a bag, the prospect of needing them seemed both succulent and far-fetched.
The Capanna Margherita, the Margherita Hut in English, perches on the tiptop of a 4,554-metre peak the Swiss call the Signalkuppe and the Italians know as the Punta Gnifetti, part of the vast Monte Rosa massif that straddles the border. There are beds for 70, y'all tin book online and it costs a modest €100 (Due south$152) per night. Getting there, however, isn't exactly straightforward.
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First, the phoney war. I flew to Milan, picked upwardly a rent car and drove north-west to the hamlet of Gressoney (best known equally function of the Monterosa ski area, alongside its neighbours Alagna and Champoluc). Going directly from sea level to nigh three vertical miles up would be goading distance sickness, and then my offset two nights were spent in the Orestes Hutte, a delightful footling hikers' hotel on the hillside, where marmots played on the grass outside and ibex paraded past after dinner. At lunchtime on day three, I met my guide, Nick Parks, and we rode the cable cars as high as they become – to the Punta Indren, at 3,275 metres.
I had boarded the first lift in shorts, simply we emerged from the summit station into fog and snow, the temperature somewhere around freezing. (Funny how rapidly, even after weeks of sweltering nights, the novelty of being cold wears off.) An hour's walk, over a glacier, and then upward a succession of ladders and metal steps hammered into the rock, took us to the Gnifetti Hut, built in 1876, our overnight pit-stop before an early outset for the Margherita Hut itself.
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Giovanni Gnifetti was the parish priest in Alagna and, in 1842, was the first to climb the Signalkuppe. That feat helped put Alagna on the map and the village grew quickly, with grand new hotels and a roster of professional guides ready to atomic number 82 wealthy clients up to the peaks. Fifty-fifty Umberto I and Queen Margherita became regular visitors.
The Italian Alpine Club ordered the construction of a hut on the Punta Gnifetti in 1889 both as shelter for climbers and every bit a place to bear out loftier-altitude scientific research. The building was brought up on the backs of mules and labourers and was completed in 1893. With a courtly entourage, Queen Margherita herself climbed up to cutting the ribbon.
The world wars put an end to all that. The flow of aristocratic adventurers dried up, many of Alagna'southward hotels airtight, and the village slunk dorsum into obscurity. Up on the peak, though, the hotel endured.
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Our summit day started at 5.45am, only before dawn. We fixed crampons to our boots and roped together (to avoid falling into crevasses), but it was just a walk, admitting long and high – the air up here contains forty per cent less oxygen than at sea level. Some 40cm of fresh snow had fallen overnight simply enough people had fix out before united states of america to break a trail all the mode. We paused often to take in phenomenal views, down to the summits of the Dent Blanche and Matterhorn, and the long Gorner glacier flowing towards Zermatt.
And then, past 10am, we were on the concluding ascension. The nigh dangerous part came with a few steps to go, when a helicopter swooped in to land abreast the hut, its tail rotor metres from our heads, the downdraft enveloping us in a momentary hurricane.
Inside – all was at-home. In the dining room, a few guests looked up as if we had walked in from a decorated loftier street. Throughout the Alps, Pyrenees and Dolomites, but two peaks are higher, but it rapidly became credible this was not some gnarly climbers' campfire. At that place was a eating place, WiFi, a small library, a proper espresso machine, even a bar. Did anyone actually drinkable upward here? "Oh yes – beer when they get in, reddish wine later dinner," said Claudio Bonetta, i of a team of 5 staff who typically work for two weeks before descending to the valley to recuperate.
Nosotros ate lunch – pasta and Margherita pizza (what else?) – then sat in the sun on the terrace, wisps of clouds beneath united states, streaks of glitter from the swell lakes far across. We didn't stay; I had to get dorsum to work. Later an afternoon descent to the cable cars, then a dash to the airdrome, I was home in London that nighttime, the mittens and downwards jacket gear up to go back in the loft, my weekend in the cold already a little hard to believe.
DETAILS
For details of Capanna Margherita see rifugimonterosa.information technology. Information technology is normally open up from tardily June to mid-September; in wintertime there is a bunkroom for climbers simply no staff. Nick Parks (backcountryadventures.co.uk) offers guided trips to the hut, from €190 per person. The Orestes Hutte costs from €95 per dark, half-board, based on two sharing a double room
By Tom Robbins © 2022 The Financial Times
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