10 articles
Mountain huts, climbing, via ferrata and mountain culture: understanding, preparing and staying safe.
In the mountains, a good day is often decided well before you set off, when you choose your route. This section brings together what you need to plan a walk at altitude. You will see how to read a route description and a map with tightly packed contours, understand waymarks and how paths are graded for difficulty, and work out timings that allow for the ascent. We also explain how to reach the start by public transport and where to find official mountain forecasts. The routes we describe follow waymarked paths.
Mountain huts get a chapter of their own. We explain how to book, what half board covers and what to pack for a night in a dormitory. The etiquette of communal living too, from leaving your boots at the door to keeping to mealtimes, since huts can come as a surprise the first time. Closer to home, we also look at bothies and the code that comes with them. The rules of protected areas, from national parks to nature reserves, are taken from the official texts and the pages of the bodies that manage them, dated, with the authority to contact when a point remains unclear.
Mountains are also a culture and a lived-in landscape. Upland grazing, sheep and cattle, guardian dogs in the Alps and Pyrenees, shy wildlife and fragile plants: we explain how to share these places with the people and animals that live and work there. We also look at what the place names, landscapes and history of the valleys have to tell. On the kit side, we help you read spec sheets for boots, poles and waterproofs, based on manufacturers’ published data and the relevant standards, with sources cited.
This section speaks to walkers discovering the mountains as much as to those who return every season and want to understand more of what they see. Our route guides draw on official guidebooks, national park authorities and federations, and when someone on the team has followed the path they describe, they tell the story under their own name. As for devotees of hut soup, a more serious subject than it looks, they will not be forgotten.
MountainsPractical guide
A bothy in the Highlands, a Winterraum in the Tyrol, a winter refuge in the Pyrenees: three shelters where nobody greets you at the door, and everyone ends up as a bit of a warden. Their rules are written by the people who look after them, and they differ: booking, payment, firewood, rubbish. Here is what the Mountain Bothies Association, the Alpine clubs and France’s FFCAM say, and what to pack.
Guillaume Hoarau··17 min
6a, VI+, 5.10a, E1 5a: a conversion chart for climbing grades, based on the UIAA and Mountain Project, with its limits and what no grade tells you.
Guillaume Hoarau··9 min
Categories 0 to 4, UV400 marking, snow and altitude: what sunglasses really measure, and why category 4 is not made for the road.
Guillaume Hoarau··10 min
A night at the Aoulhet hut in the French Pyrenees with two Danish walkers: space, the stove, water, noise, and leaving the hut clean behind you.
Alex Aubert··12 min
CAF, DAV, ÖAV and SAC compared: annual fee, rescue costs covered and mountain hut discounts, with the official 2026-2027 figures.
Guillaume Hoarau··9 min
Length, area, volume, mass balance: what Swiss, French and Austrian glacier monitoring has recorded since 1880, and what it changes for walkers in the Alps.
Guillaume Hoarau··16 min
Met Office, MWIS, Météo-France, MeteoSwiss, GeoSphere, DWD, NWS: where to find each country’s mountain forecast, and what its terms actually mean.
Guillaume Hoarau··14 min
Reach the Alps and Pyrenees without a car: night trains, gateway stations, buses and park shuttles, from Paris, Lyon, London or Munich.
Guillaume Hoarau··8 min
Booking a staffed or unstaffed mountain hut in France, the price of half board, sleeping bag liners, timings, children and dogs: all for a first night.
Guillaume Hoarau··8 min
The Swiss Alpine Club’s T1 to T6 scale, the blue, red and black paths of Austria and Germany, and the French federation’s grades: how to read each one.
Guillaume Hoarau··7 min
Français (France)
English (UK)
English (US)
Deutsch (Deutschland)