“A hut to feel at home”
What is a mountain hut?
A soul’s place, first of all.
A safe haven, a destination. A nest.
It’s a place where you feel at home.
A feeling to be experienced not only by those who arrive here after having walked for miles and miles (as the competitors for the Tor des Géants do).
But also by simple hikers.
Because at high altitude the manager who welcomes his guests
becomes the landlord who opens the doors of his world.
You enter with your own rucksack and your own shoes on your feet, but everything else is shared.
Including a passion for open spaces, silences full of thoughts,
fatigue, the rain on your face.
Those who walk the Tor des Géants trails
come across 16 of the 54 huts of the Aosta Valley
and experience a welcome which is nothing like
common courtesy.
True guardians of the mountains,
the managers of the huts become fathers of a great family,
which is united not by blood ties but by shared passions.
And so we listen to their stories
directly told by them.
[Text by Paola Pignatelli, taken from the book: “Tor des Géants”, a photographic story by Stefano Torrione, Sime Books 2012]