The Italian Huts Where Mountaineering Was Born

At the top of a steep trail that rises swiftly from an alpine valley with almost no switchbacks or other relief from the pitch, past scrubby trees and boulders, past wild blueberries and flowers, up two cliffs, over one snowfield, and across, repeatedly, a frigid meltwater stream that cascades off the side of the mountain, sits a small alpine hut called Bivacco Giusto Gervasutti, used mostly by mountaineers on their way to the peaks beyond.