ID41: Mountain huts: a lab to observe mountain transitions

Abstract ID 402 | Date: 2022-09-12 16:12 – 16:24 | Type: Oral Presentation | Place: SOWI – Lecture hall HS1 |

Sturm, Skye (1,2); Piccioli Stengel, Giovanni (1)

It is impossible to separate the theme of alpine hut management, with its organisational, technological, environmental and energy-related aspects, from a holistic vision of the challenges present in any project regarding the spatial, material, formal and constructive qualities of an alpine hut building.

An architectural approach, on the other hand, can sometimes be relegated to the sidelines. However, an architectural vision is essential to understand the complete picture of requirements and to provide adequate solutions in terms of quality of space and ability of the structure to integrate into and dialogue with the surrounding alpine context.

For a mountain hut which serves as an important observation point, it is critical that its environmental impact is also evaluated from a visual point of view. Furthermore, an enhanced quality of space not only guarantees an increased sense of comfort for managers and users, it also creates improved functionality and optimised performance through consistent distribution and organisation combined with technological strategies.

The contributors propose to display and analyse a series of recent interventions to mountain huts distributed over the Alpine chain that exemplify this approach, evaluating strengths and weaknesses in order to verify theoretical principles and identify best practices and model case studies.

Abstract ID 464 | Date: 2022-09-12 16:24 – 16:36 | Type: Oral Presentation | Place: SOWI – Lecture hall HS1 |

Duglio, Stefano

Sustainable tourism is a widely studied topic, which has been assessed at different geographical contexts and under different perspectives. Referring to the mountain environment, sustainability has been considered in assessing mountain destinations, activities and the hospitality sector as well.

Among the mountain accommodation facilities panorama, the most representative and critical-to-be-managed structures, i.e. mountain huts, have been analyzed with specific reference to their service quality (Duglio & Beltramo, 2014), their relationship with the surrounding environment (Beltramo & Duglio, 2016) as well as contemplating the figure of the changing guest.

In the last few years, research has also started taking into consideration the issue of accessibility in the tourism and hospitality sector. In fact, due to geographical and physical constraints, mountain huts can be a significant case study for understanding strengths and difficulties in hosting people with special needs in extreme management conditions.

This contribution refers to an exploratory analysis carried out in the Northwestern Italian Alps, Piedmont and Aosta Valley Regions based on semi-structured interviews to four mountain huts’ managers. The huts were selected depending on their reachability – by car or on foot -, a variable that may contribute to define the typology of visitors’ needs and expectations. Preliminary results* show how mountain huts that work in a severe environment (i.e. medium-high altitude and reachable only on foot) may face difficulties in hosting visitors with physical constraints, who, on the other side, do not attend this kind of accommodation. In any case, mountain managers have shown in the past their ability to host and welcome people with special requests. Considering accessibility on its broad meaning, no difficulties at all have been registered for coping with special dietary requirements as vegetarian or vegan gluten free guests, who nowadays represent an important component of the mountain hut tourism demand as pointed out by the interviewees

* the methodology and results are actually under review by the international Journal Sustainability

References:

Beltramo, R.; Duglio, S. (2016). A methodology for the evaluation of mountain huts in the context of sustainable tourism. A study on 40 facilities in Piedmont region. In: Pechlaner, H.; Keller, P.; Pichler, S.; Weiermair, K. (eds.), Changing Paradigms in Sustainable Mountain Tourism Research. Problems and Perspectives, Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, pp. 267-282, ISBN 9783503167685

Duglio, S.; Beltramo, R. (2014). Quality assessment in the Italian mountain huts. European Journal of Tourism Research, 8, pp. 115-142

Abstract ID 486 | Date: 2022-09-12 16:36 – 16:48 | Type: Oral Presentation | Place: SOWI – Lecture hall HS1 |

Miczka, Jean (1,2,3); Chanteloup, Laine (1,2,3); Clivaz, Christophe (1,2,3)

Climate change, combined with socio-cultural, economic, and political transformations in mountain regions, are profoundly modifying the dynamics of alpine mountain tourism. In this regard, the mountain hut is a marker of these changes. Its functions are being reshaped by an altered seasonality, modified accessibility, and socio-cultural changes that lead to new users’ expectations. That results in adaptation in architecture, planning, user reception, and services offered by huts. They can also play a structuring role within the less-developed mountain areas in terms of collaborations with the stakeholders of the mountain valley, depending on the new spatial and temporal polarities of tourism.

This communication proposes to study the case of alpine huts in the Val d’Entremont in the Valais (Switzerland). We will review the evolution of mountain huts’ role in this valley, focusing on the multi-level governance of the less-developed mountain areas and particularly on the stakeholders around these huts. To understand the transformation of these areas, we need to consider many different parameters: change in mountain practices, legislation, interconnections between mountain refuges induced by mountain itineraries such as the Haute Route, the diverse networks of stakeholders (local, national and transnational ones), and conflicts of use. To this end, we will show how this type of atypical accommodation (isolated site with general interest mission and commercial service, water and electricity scarcity, transport and supply constraints, etc.) can have a pivotal role in diversification and transition. Mountain huts can become platforms for coordinating recreational resources that promote and host new sporting and cultural activities.

Abstract ID 145 | Date: 2022-09-12 16:48 – 17:00 | Type: Oral Presentation | Place: SOWI – Lecture hall HS1 |

Heath, Gavin Edward

South Africa last had a dedicated mountain laboratory in the Drakensberg up to the late 1980s. In the absence of a formal mountain laboratory in the country, this study will address how three mountain huts serve as quasi- or informal laboratories (and observatories), regarding mountain transitions, in a particular South African mountain range (the Hex River mountain range in the Western Cape province). The steady flow of visitors, to the huts, and the observations they make regarding mountain transitions which are passed on to the managers or convenors, provide for valuable data for the mountain researcher. Occasionally, the huts get visited by researchers who use it as a base for their scientific observations. The Hex River mountains are an extensive and prominent mountain range in the South Western Cape, with at least five peaks over 2000masl, serving as a source of high-quality water, and which has a valuable historical record as an area of exploration, heritage and recreation. Valuable data should be gained from this research, in that the huts are managed by three different organisations (a chapter of a national mountain user group, a university sports club, and a dedicated ski club) and in that their convenors (or managers) differ in age, experience and employment status.  The research was undertaken by means of a common questionnaire for one convener, followed up by a semi-structured interview conducted separately on Zoom. As two conveners declined to participate, the research for their huts was a desktop study on the literature published, including hut records. The most salient findings were that it has already been gleaned that the three huts are seeing varied and significant mountain transitions; chiefly environmental and climatological, tourism preferences and visitor numbers, and statutory/access arrangements. The most significant recommendations are that lower visitor numbers and stronger management mechanisms to limit access and environmental degradation are needed.

Abstract ID 955 | Date: 2022-09-12 17:00 – 17:12 | Type: Oral Presentation | Place: SOWI – Lecture hall HS1 |

Aschaber, Andreas (1); Stierle, Roland (1); Mair, Hanspeter (2); Erzen, Miro (3); Kotsina, Olga (5); Nikoloski, Goran (4); Trpevska, Snezana (4); Gancarcik, Ladislav (6); Temelkovski, Zivko (4); Hayek, Ingrid (1)

Mountain huts already have a 150-years tradition in Europe. More then 2500 huts, shelters and bivouacs serve hikers and mountaineers, from the lowest hut located at 26 meters in Croatia up to the highest on at 4500 meters in Italy. Initially built with the purpose of shortening long approaches for mountaineering and climbing activities, they have developed over the years to an important base for long distance hikes, complex climbs, or a simple weekend destination where good food is served.

Nevertheless, they remain as important places where hikers and mountaineers seek information about route- or weather conditions. They provide shelter for adverse weather conditions and offer alimentation. Despite a highly developed telecommunication network, mobile phone signals in remote areas are rare. In this case, a hut warden is the first point of contact to report an accident and get access to professional mountain rescue means. Nowadays, mountain huts play a very important role for visitor guidance and nature protection in order to handle the increasing number of persons seeking recreation.

Although mountain huts have such a long tradition in Europe, we have hardly reliable data about them. While most European mountaineering associations have more or less sufficient data about their huts the exact number of huts in Europe still is a mystery. In the course of a well-planned project, it was attempted to gather this information step by step to generate a inventory as a base reference for the future, on how mountain huts contribute to Europe’s GDP, welfare for rural areas or the well-being of European citizens. Mountain huts are an important meeting point for people from all over Europe where the cohesive European spirit is lived to its maximum.

Regardless of the importance of huts a major aspect is the environmental impact they have on the sensitive mountain regime. This aspect is also captured in the inventory under environmental standards of European mountain huts and reveals shortcomings in the sustainability of mountain huts.

The information was collected based on an extensive mountain huts survey which revealed how energy is provided, how the waste management system looks like or how the wastewater is treated, just to name a view aspects.

The study gave a first insight in the general environmental status of the mountain huts, which problems are prevailing and if there are any differences between central European and south-eastern European countries.

Abstract ID 389 | Date: 2022-09-12 17:12 – 17:24 | Type: Oral Presentation | Place: SOWI – Lecture hall HS1 |

Balzarini, Raffella (1); Bourdeau, Philippe (2); Marcuzzi, Melanie (3); Ployon, Estelle (3)

The high mountain (> 2,500 m) is an environment that has been poorly investigated due to its strong constraints, whether climatic, accessibility, or lack of energy resources or communication networks. It is to respond to these knowledge gaps that the “Refuges Sentinelles (RS)” research program, has been developed since 2017 : it takes mountain huts as key environmental and societal “sensors/radars” of the combined effects of rapid climate and cultural change.

In 2021, 25 mountain huts of the Ecrins National Park, Vanoise National Parks and the Mont Blanc Massif are involved in the program. Many professional and territorial stakeholders working in the areas are involved (sports federations, professional unions, tourist offices) and participate in the program’s orientation.

This experimental set-up for observing change in the high mountains is based on the mountain hut as a place of measurement, observation, work and exchange between natural and social sciences, taking into account geophysical, climatic and biological processes as well as tourist and sports practices.

RS studies these processes from a dual point of view: on the one hand, “the practitioner” who is observed through the setting up of protocols for the collection of quantitative data (i.e.: number of overnight stays per season) and qualitative data (i.e.: socio-demographic profiles from surveys, huts ‘occupancy quota, number of hikers per hike, etc.), in situ observations, collaborative workshops. On the other hand, the “mountain hut wardens” are led in a reflective observation of the evolution of their profession.

Highly exploratory at first, RS is characterized by a sparse configuration, in space and in time: mountain huts located in very diverse areas, differentiated seasonality, which implies monitoring protocols that produce multi-source, multi-format and multi-scale data. Therefore, the main challenge of the program was to set up a permanent observation methodology that could be replicated in other mountains ranges. To this end, the implementation of a geo-database and an interactive cartographic atlas has facilitated the interoperability of multi-source data and federated the various disciplines that intersect in its context.

The spatial approach led to redefine the research questions around the geographical dimension of the ‘refuge’. It’s considered as a cartographic ‘point’, a base camp for observations as well as a catalyst of flows and interactions (the routes taken, the human-biodiversity crossings, etc.).

Refuges Sentinelles has initiated a long-term collective brainpower approach between researchers and practitioners and developed tools that contribute to the participatory and educational co-construction of knowledge.

Abstract ID 386 | Date: 2022-09-12 17:45 – 17:47 | Type: Poster Presentation | Place: SOWI – Garden |

De Rosemont, Sophie

The high mountains are an environment that is particularly exposed to climate and societal changes, especially through the tourist activity that it generates. Today, we can observe a real appeal for the mountain sports out of the resorts (ski touring in winter, or high mountain hiking in summer) (Bourdeau and Chappaz, 2015). This is how a repositioning takes place between the developed mountain areas (ski resorts) and the less-developed mountain areas. It is on the latter that the HutObsTour research programme focuses. Using the mountain hut as an observatory but also as a research object, it questions the dynamics in high mountain areas on the scale of the French Alps (the Ecrins and Mont-Blanc massifs) and the Swiss Alps (Valais).

Thus, as part of this programme, my thesis deal with the professions involved in the tourist accompaniment related with the mountain huts. My research specially focuses on the construction process of professional cultures in the high mountains. Starting from the hypothesis put forward by Jean-Pierre Bozonnet, based on the imaginary as “an essential key to understanding attitudes towards the mountains” (Bozonnet, 1992, p. 6), I would like to focus on the evolution of the mountain imaginary and its impact on the professional cultures of the less-developed mountain areas.

Having started my research a month ago, my project is still quite broad. Focused on the high mountain huts, I plan to carry out a first part of the fieldwork in June-July in order to get a closer look at the existing dynamics and the interactions between the different professions. Prior to this first phase of fieldwork, I would like to conduct exploratory interviews with professionals (mountain guides, mountain leaders and hut keepers) of the less-developed mountain areas. It will be a first approach to understand the internal logics of the professional culture of each of these professions. I therefore propose, within the framework of the International Mountain Conference, to give feedback on my first observations and materials collected, and my first working hypotheses on the issues of these professions in a context of transition.

Gilles Chappaz, Philippe Bourdeau, « Réchauffement, vers quelle mutation ? », Guides, La Revue, juill. 2015, p. 33‑37.

Jean-Paul Bozonnet, Des monts et des mythes: l’imaginaire social de la montagne, Grenoble, Presses universitaires de Grenoble, 1992.

Abstract ID 369 | Date: 2022-09-12 17:47 – 17:49 | Type: Poster Presentation | Place: SOWI – Garden |

Mourey, Jacques (1); Clivaz, Christophe (2); Bourdeau, Philippe (3)

The tourism model of development in the Alps, mainly based on snow and ski resorts since the middle of the 20^thcentury, has been at a turning point since the 2000s. It is characterized by a progressive restructuration and diversification, both in summer and winter. In this evolution, mountain sports (ski touring, mountaineering, hiking, etc.) play an important role. However, the evolution of these sport practices is the subject of a major knowledge gap, especially on the frequentation of the “poorly developed” mountain areas, i.e. outside the urban centers that constitute the ski resorts.

In mountain areas there is a specific data which is the frequentation of mountain huts. Because of their role of shelter and stopover for mountain sports practitioners, they are important places in the structuration of those sports and the number and socio-professional profile of the people who frequent them are crucial information for the study of the frequentation and evolution of mountain sports in “poorly developed” mountains. However, this data is not always easily accessible, especially over a long period of time, and it presents several biases and limits.

In this communication, we propose to discuss the interests and the limits of mountain hut frequentation data in Switzerland and in France to study the frequentation of “poorly developed” mountain areas and more particularly the evolution of mountain sports taking place there. Then, an example of analysis for a sample of huts in the Valais Alps (Switzerland) will be presented. This analysis allowed us to confirm (i) the generalized decrease in the frequentation of high mountain areas by mountaineers in summer, with a decrease of 11 % in the number of overnight stays between 1995-98 and 2016-19 in the 8 huts studied, (ii) the concentration of practitioners on technically easy and/or emblematic and/or quickly accessible routes and (ii) the development of ski touring, with an increase of 6 % in the number of overnight stays in spring between 1995-98 and 2016-19.

Abstract ID 618 | Date: 2022-09-12 17:49 – 17:51 | Type: Poster Presentation | Place: SOWI – Garden |

Basnett, Smriti (1); Ghuman, Sartaj (2)

This is not a success story. It is merely reportage of facts as they are on the ground.

In the quest to understand the changing climate, landscape, culture, livelihood and life of the yak herders and the high altitude dwellers, we set up a hut at 2,800 meters and 4,800 meters, in Lachung Valley, located in the north Sikkim Himalayas, a region dominated by mountains, glaciers, alpine forest and cold desert.

Seven months were spent in the mountains; reccing glaciers, monitoring glacier melt, crossing high mountain passes, and documenting the life of the people and the yak herders.

This talk and the discourse includes our struggle in setting up the research hut, preliminary observations from the river runoff and sky charts, and narratives from the locals and the yak herders about the changing environment and the very interesting self-government system known as Dzumsa (dzoms-sa) that was established during the first half of the 19th century to provide structure and cohesion for societies and is still prevalent in North Sikkim.

Abstract ID 356 | Date: 2022-09-12 17:51 – 17:53 | Type: Poster Presentation | Place: SOWI – Garden |

Beltramo, Riccardo

Born as a support for the ascents to the surrounding peaks, today the mountain refuges welcome Italian and international tourists throughout the territory of the Alps and the Apennines.

In the course of thirty years, observing the reality of the refuges, one gets the impression that a lot has changed: it seems clear that following a quantitative and qualitative change in the demander services, the managers of the refuges have promptly adapted their offer. Thus, from an “essential” environment, the refuge seems to have become a comfortable place to take a break during a multi-day trek or to spend a comfortable weekend. Nowadays the huts have become more and more elective destinations for a varied audience of mountain visitors.

The interest in mountaineering has given way, in whole or in part, to the quality of the food proposal or to the search for the well-being that is obtained from a walk in the mountains; to the proposal of a safe playground for climbing enthusiasts or mountain (e-)bikers to whom ad hoc services are dedicated. Refuges are proposed as centers of cultural activities, aimed at facilitating the discovery of the territory, or of school tourism or places to experiment with wellness techniques.

The content of the “refuge manager” profession has had to be enriched with new skills to respond to the heterogeneity of demand. Among them, the presence of shelters on social networks leads us to believe that an important role is assigned to communication, a winning factor to conquer new market shares and to build customer loyalty.

The impetus given by the containment measures of the CoViD-19 pandemic to the so-called proximity tourism, has led to the presumption that the mountain can be a privileged destination and the refuges could become a destination for short-range tourism.

These question marks have become research questions: Has the role of the refuge changed and how did the visitors? What effect will the rules for the containment of CoViD-19 have in the opinion of the managers? Will the limitations on reception lead to an uncontrollable invasion of mountain tourists?

To answer the research questions, a survey was carried out by means of a questionnaire which was joined by 127 refuge managers, distributed in the Italian territory of the Alps. The work presents the results achieved and aims to extend the survey to neighboring countries.

Abstract ID 637 | Date: 2022-09-12 17:53 – 17:55 | Type: Poster Presentation | Place: SOWI – Garden |

Vialette, Yannick (1,2,3)

The mountain as a scientific object (Joutard, 1986), a social construct and a place to live, is an open-air laboratory for scientific research (Debarbieux, 2001; Debarbieux, Fourny, 2004). It serves as a field of study for research, but at the same time it is also a place conducive to mobility such as leisure and tourism. However, this space faces current societal and environmental changes. On the one side, this reinforces scientific interest, and at the same it requires to rethink the socioeconomic activities that take place (Bourdeau, 2006). The proposed human geographical approach attempts to show the links that exist between tourism mobility and scientific research. Thus, it can explain how these linkages can contribute to improve the relations between society and ecosystems in mountain areas.

Scientific research and associated knowledge can become important resources for a territory. We define resources as unique assets because they are 1. generic and not linked to the territory and 2. specific, because they are embedded in a specific context (Colletis & Pecqueur, 2005). Scientific knowledge illustrates this point. It can be localised and therefore specific to a given place and time. It can also be transferable, highlighting its generic side. They have an intellectual, economic and heritage interest.

Mountain areas need to adapt their activities rapidly in the face of the fast and unprecedented societal and climatic changes (Dentant & al., 2021). Scientific resources can help to facilitate this adaptation process. Thus, local societies have great interest to operationalise this resources and develop other socioeconomic activities. They contribute to the development and attractiveness of the territory and facilitate the awareness of large scale global changes (in particular climatic).

Our study leans on the research project RefLab in the National Park Ecrins in the French Alps. This project considers mountain huts as potential laboratories for various research (social sciences, ecology, climatology…). We show how RefLab contribute to local and to generic knowledge and associated socioeconomics activities such as the Itinerancy in Sentinel Huts. And so, our research shows how the interactions between research and tourism can lead to a better comprehension of social and ecological changes in mountain areas.