Field Journal

The Architecture and Culture of Mountain Shelters
Words & Photography: Aaron Rolph

Facing away from the steep rocky face, I manage to place a crampon high up the crack and reach out to secure my axe over my left shoulder, eventually finding some high-quality névé that should offer enough purchase to hold my bodyweight. It feels like a pretty advanced climbing move to be doing solo, especially with this impossibly heavy pack dragging me back to the glacier below. With an overwhelming sense of relief, I awkwardly shimmy my way over the crux. I must be only 100m or so from the remote Bivacco Tita Ronconi now – my only hope for some comfort tonight, and the final chapter in a project that has absorbed me all winter.

We’re deep into May now, conditions neither ideal for skiing nor alpinism, but I’m here with a job to do. The vision of photographing my favourite refuges and bivouacs became a reality when global publisher gestalten gave me the nod to create the book Alpine Refuges. The caveat? They need all 30 to be photographed and written up over just one winter season. The pressure of it all intimidates and excites me. Some of these huts are plainly not intended to be accessed in winter. It feels fitting that the ascent to Bivacco Tita Ronconi is a final test – a physical and metaphorical crux in a long, challenging, yet incredible journey to complete this book.

The ridge above is lost in white, wind tearing at the spindrift and needling my face raw with snow, until at last the dull shape of the bivacco surfaces against the rapidly dulling sky as night begins to fall. I can’t help but chuckle to myself about how much of an ordeal that was, while elated to have made it to safety. I secure my backpack to one of the cables that anchors the hut to this snowy ridge – a ridge barely wide enough to cradle this tiny box on the spine – before starting to dig out the door from snow. I hack at it with numb hands, gloves now so wet they’re doing nothing at all. I carve through hard-packed snow, fighting fatigue, and when the door finally gives I collapse inside, only the sound of my racing heartbeat keeping me company.

Though I would never advise to head into the high Alps in bad weather, it is these exact moments that motivated me to create this book in the first place. Outside, the world is a white fury of wind and snow, a place no-one belongs for long. And yet inside, this tiny metal sanctuary stands boldly, offering a place of warmth; a small stove, the hiss of melting snow, and a moment to breathe, to be still. It is this comfort in uncomfortable places that captures the essence of why these refuges matter: small testaments to resilience and humanity, clinging to the edges of impossible landscapes.

The next morning, after a long rest, I photograph the hut just as I’ve photographed many others – attempting to capture its unlikely character in this wild space, before making three long rappels back down the cliff I’d climbed the day before. It feels like the final piece of a long, improbable puzzle.

The process of visiting, photographing, and writing about these huts became something far bigger than I expected. Each trip carried its own rhythm of exhaustion and reward – early starts, whiteouts, frozen lenses, and those rare, golden mornings when the light hit just right. What struck me most wasn’t just the architecture or the history, but the sense of continuity: every hut, no matter how remote, linked by the same purpose of offering warmth and welcome in places that ask so much of us.

I hope, in turning the pages of Alpine Refuges, you find the same quiet awe that carried me through this journey – and maybe it’ll inspire you to seek out a few of these remarkable places for yourself. Because while the photographs and stories can take you close, there’s nothing quite like hearing the wind outside, feeling the cold in your hands, and realising just how much it means to have a roof over your head in these impossibly high places.

Get your copy of Alpine Refuges here.