Unstaffed Huts in Europe: Bothies, Winterraum, and the Rules

A wooden door that sticks a little, a logbook open on the table, a cold stove, and a tin box for the money. Nobody’s there to tell you where to sleep or when dinner is: in an unstaffed hut, you’re the caretaker, from the moment you push the door open to the moment you close it behind you. In Europe, three families of shelters, among others, work this way: unstaffed huts and refuges in France, the winter rooms of the German and Austrian Alpine clubs, and the bothies of Great Britain. They look alike, but their rules aren’t the same, and each organization that runs them writes its own.

What follows applies to the organizations named here, as of November 8, 2026. A hut, refuge, or bothy may have its own instructions, posted on-site or on its web page: those are the ones to read before you go.

In France: winter refuges and unstaffed huts

First, a common mix-up: a hut in the mountains isn’t necessarily a shelter for hikers. In Pyrenees National Park, in southwestern France, the park’s charter counts nearly 250 shepherds’ huts, and plans to reserve their use for shepherds during the summer season [1]. The same charter also aims to build a network of hikers’ shelters out of existing huts, but only ones with no grazing use [1]. So a shepherd’s hut isn’t a hikers’ shelter by default: in summer, it’s first and foremost where the shepherd lives.

Mountain huts, on the other hand, have this covered. Off-season, every hut in Pyrenees National Park keeps part of the building open as a shelter [2]. France’s federation of Alpine and mountain clubs (Fédération française des clubs alpins et de montagne, FFCAM), which runs huts across the French mountains, does the same: its huts, generally staffed from spring to early fall, keep a part accessible and open the rest of the year, so they can still serve as a shelter and for rescues [3]. Some call it le refuge d’hiver, the winter refuge [4].

No staff, no meals, and facilities that vary from one hut to the next. At La Pra, in the Belledonne range of the French Alps, the winter section has beds, blankets, and composting toilets, but no gas, stove, or dishes: the hut asks you to bring a stove and a warm sleeping bag, and reports a reading of 28 °F (-2 °C) inside during a recent January [4]. At the Brèche de Roland, above Gavarnie in the Pyrenees, it sleeps 30 and has a few blankets, but no gas or cooking gear, and the fireplace can’t be used [5].

Open doesn’t mean free, the FFCAM stresses: in remote places, costs run higher [3]. You pay for the night online on the hut’s website, in advance or afterward, in the hut’s honor box by check or in cash, or by check mailed to the club that manages it [3]. For 28 huts, from the Isère department to the Pyrenees and Mercantour National Park, the federation recommends booking and paying online, which gives an idea of how many spots are left. But a booking doesn’t guarantee a bed: others may show up without knowing the rule, and the FFCAM asks you to welcome them kindly [3]. Prices are listed on each hut’s page; our guide to staying in a mountain hut in France gives two examples in the Mercantour.

That leaves the hut that belongs to no club: one owned by a municipality, a grazing association, or a park. Its rules sometimes fit in a few lines on the tourist office website. The Aoulhet cabin, above Saint-Pé-de-Bigorre in the French Pyrenees, is open year-round, free, and with no booking, with six sleeping spots in a loft and a section kept for grazing use; the tourist office suggests bringing a tent depending on how busy it is, and the town counts on everyone’s sense of civic duty to keep it clean [6]. An account of a night at Aoulhet shows what this kind of sharing looks like in practice.

In the German-speaking Alps: the Alpine clubs’ Winterraum

The German Alpine Club (Deutscher Alpenverein, DAV), Germany’s mountaineering club, describes the WinterraumGerman for winter room: the part of an Alpine club hut left open when the hut isn’t staffed; plural Winterräume. as a heatable, miniature version of a self-catering hut: bunks, blankets, a place to cook, and dishes. If there’s no fuel in the room itself, a note tells you where it’s stored [7]. Category I huts, the club’s most remote, generally have one; if not, an unlocked shelter that you enter from outside, with blankets at the very least, is provided instead [7]. The German, Austrian, and South Tyrolean Alpine clubs run some 550 category I and II huts between them [8].

That second room has another name, the SchutzraumGerman for shelter room: the emergency shelter of an Alpine club hut, for taking cover in an emergency.. The Austrian Alpine Club (Österreichischer Alpenverein, ÖAV) explains that it’s meant for emergencies, for short-term shelter: at least 32 square feet (3 m²), enclosed on all sides, with blankets at the very least. The Winterraum, by contrast, is meant for planned stays, but not for parties or for a long-term nomadic lifestyle [9].

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The door? It’s normally unlocked, or opened with the clubs’ special key, the AV key, which the section that owns the hut lends out [7]. The Vorarlberg Alpine Club, a section of the ÖAV in Austria’s westernmost state, puts the number of Winterräume in Austria at around 300; it says they’re normally open and need no key, lists the exceptions in its region, and lends its keys for €3 a day plus a €100 deposit [10]. Its page, dated October 9, 2025, also announces that the winter rooms at the Tilisuna-Hütte and the Freschen-Haus will stay closed until mid-January 2027, while their emergency shelters stay open [10]. Hence the first step: check the hut’s page, or ask the section that owns it, whether the room is open, and how you get in.

Do you need to book? The DAV says that registering ahead is generally not necessary [7]. The ÖAV still recommends booking online where you can, so you don’t end up in a completely packed winter room [9]. Paying, on the other hand, is never optional. The rate covers a contribution to firewood and facilities; there’s a cash box in almost every Winterraum, and you can also transfer the money to the section’s bank account [7]. The ÖAV advises bringing cash [9].

How much? The joint hut rules of the German and Austrian clubs cap a night in a bunkroom or a Winterraum, in a category I hut, at €15 for a member age 25 or older through 2026, then at €18 starting in 2027; nonmembers pay at least €12 more [8, 11]. The exact rate comes from the section that owns the hut [7], and our comparison of Alpine club memberships explains what a membership card costs. The DAV doesn’t mince words: in recent years, the fee has often gone unpaid, or the room has been left a mess, and many sections lose several hundred euros a year, even though they haul the firewood up, sometimes by helicopter [7].

The DAV sums up the spirit of these rooms in one sentence: leave the hut the way you’d like to find it yourself. Its instructions, in order [13]:

• check the stove and the flue before lighting a fire;
• use firewood sparingly, and don’t split it on the stove or the floor;
• wash and put away the dishes, put the blankets back, clean the table and the stove, air out the room;
• sign the hut book, noting, for your own safety, where you’re headed next;
• pay the fees, firewood included, with a payment slip sent to the section if there’s no cash box;
• when you leave, put out the fire, empty the ash drawer, close the windows and shutters, lock the door, and return the key to the section;
• report any damage right away: a broken window, a damaged lock, firewood running low.

The ÖAV adds three points: equipment may be missing or in poor shape, so a gas stove goes in your pack just in case; even when the firewood has run out, you never burn the furniture; and you never light a fire in the oven or the flue [9]. Finally, the hut rules require a sleeping bag liner on every bed, and quiet hours from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. as a general rule [8].

In Great Britain: bothies and the Bothy Code

The word originally meant farm lodging for itinerant workers. Today, a bothyAn open, free, unstaffed shelter, usually an old cottage in a remote spot, in Scotland, northern England, or Wales. is an open shelter, usually in a remote location: four walls and a roof for travelers who need them, most often an old cottage at least several hours’ walk from the nearest public road [14]. The Mountain Bothies Association (MBA), a charity registered in Scotland, maintains about 100 of them, in Scotland, northern England, and Wales; it owns hardly any, and works by agreement with the landowners [14]. Founded in 1965, it pays for this upkeep with membership dues and donations, and most of the work is done by volunteers [15].

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No cash box and no reservations here: MBA bothies are free, open to anyone, member or not, and can’t be booked. “Just turn up,” the association says: expect others to show up looking for shelter too, and make room for them. If you plan to use a bothy in a popular area, it recommends bringing a tent [14].

What you’ll find fits in one line: a windproof, waterproof building with a dry place to sleep. Sometimes a sleeping platform, often a wooden or concrete floor; a fireplace or stove, but you’ll usually need to carry in your own fuel; water comes from a nearby stream or spring; a stove is for cooking, candles for light [14]. The MBA advises starting with all the gear you’d take camping, except the tent, and reminds you that most bothies are up in the hills, where nights run cool [16]. For water, bring a way to treat it: our guide to water for backcountry camping compares the methods.

The code also asks you to record your visit in the bothy logbook, and notes that bothies are used entirely at your own risk [17]. For bathroom trips, the MBA gives the distances: some 660 feet (200 m) at least from the bothy, and about 200 feet (60 m) from the water supply [16]. What counts as a short stay? For more than a couple of nights, you need the owner’s permission [18]. And the restrictions follow a calendar: stag stalking from August to October in Scotland, the hind cull (when female red deer are culled) from November to February on some estates, and lambing for about a month, sometime between March and May depending on the place. Often it’s access to the hills that’s at stake, and the bothy itself stays open. The most reliable source, according to the MBA, is each bothy’s page on its website, rather than books or social media not run by the association [19].

Finally, the MBA warns that most bothies are remote: you need to know how to use a map and compass, and there’s often no cell service [14]. If you bring a tent, access rules differ between Scotland and the rest of the UK: see our guide to wild camping in the UK.

What to bring, what to leave behind

Line up the rules of all three families, and your pack nearly packs itself. The MBA gives the starting point: assume the shelter has no facilities at all [16].

• Something to sleep in: a sleeping bag and a sleeping pad, even if there are blankets; at the very least a sleeping bag liner in a Winterraum [5, 8, 16].
• Something to cook with and see by: a stove, a headlamp, and candles in a bothy [4, 9, 14].
• Food and water: there are no meals and no faucet, and water often comes from the stream [4, 14].
• A way to sleep outside: a tent or a light shelter, since a spot is never guaranteed [3, 14].
• A way to pay: cash, a check, or the section’s bank details [3, 7, 9].
• A trash bag: nothing gets picked up out there, at a winter refuge or at a bothy [4, 14].

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What you leave behind depends on the place, and this is where the rules differ most, especially on firewood. The MBA asks you to leave dry kindling and, if possible, some fuel to welcome the next visitors [17, 18]. The FFCAM, by contrast, asks you to go easy on the logs, since nobody will restock the hut before it reopens [3]. In a Winterraum, the wood is paid for with the night [7], and a sign may reserve it for emergencies. The rest doesn’t change: a clean hut, your trash in your pack, the fire out, the doors and shutters closed.

No guaranteed spot, a shared shelter

None of these huts promises you a bed. Booking an unstaffed hut doesn’t guarantee a spot, the FFCAM warns; it advises bringing what you need in case the hut is full, and considering another destination if the hut already shows as full, especially over the Christmas and New Year holidays [3]. In a bothy, the first to arrive don’t own the place [18]. And in an Alpine club hut, a sick or injured person who can’t reasonably be expected to descend, or a rescue team on duty, gets a bed before anyone else [8].

Hence the tent at the bottom of your pack, which will make ultralight purists wince. It then follows the local rules: camping is allowed here, banned there, tolerated elsewhere at certain hours. Our guide to your first backcountry camping trip points you, step by step, to the rules in each country.

Sharing, finally, means keeping your gear together even if there’s room to spare, and respecting other people’s sleep. The Alpine club hut rules ban cooking and eating in the bunkrooms, walking in wearing mountain boots, and using an open flame there, whether a candle or a stove; they also ask you to carry your trash back down to the valley [8]. Faced with a large group, the MBA asks you to politely remind them of its policy, and never to try to evict them [18].

The smart move: before you go, open the page of whoever runs the hut, club, section, town, or MBA, and read it all the way through. Then pack as if the hut were full. If it isn’t, you’ll have carried a tent for nothing, and slept dry anyway.

Worth watching

Made for the Mountain Bothies Association, this video walks through the five parts of the Bothy Code, from making room for others to leaving the bothy clean and the fire out.

The video is hosted by YouTube (Google): nothing loads until you play it, and Google may then set cookies.

Guillaume Hoarau

Camping, backpacking, bushcraft and hiking

Guillaume Hoarau writes for Outfarer about camping, backpacking, bushcraft, and hiking. A survival-skills buff and a collector of vintage field manuals, he loves clear explanations, lists that actually help and other people’s stories, which he tells well.

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