Hut warden
Hüttenwart , also hut landlord , is the job of looking after a refuge . It can be a professional activity or an honorary position . From warden we speak in terms of janitorial work, from landlord to the accommodation and meals as guest host .
job profile
A hut warden carries out the housekeeping and manual work in a mountain hut mostly located in the mountains : He cooks simple meals for guests, often under difficult conditions (e.g. cooking with a wood stove), cleans the premises, does the laundry, is responsible for purchasing and storing groceries and doing minor repairs in the house. The job profile is diverse: business management, gastronomy, cooking, hygiene, beverage studies, housekeeping, marketing, accounting, foreign languages, craft and technical talent, knowledge of weather and the environment and their influences. The hut warden often offers mountain tours as a mountain guide or the use of climbing gardens.
The work of a hut warden and his team is very extensive, very different from hut to hut and the dependencies are very complex. The huts are not hotels, but the work involved is no less extensive. During the high season, a working day often lasts 14 to 18 hours. The mountaineering vigil often starts at 4 a.m. with the preparation of breakfast. The tea ("March tea") is also provided. Normally, wake up and breakfast are between 6:30 and 8:00 a.m. The hut warden then cleans the bedroom so that it is ready for the new guests. Since there are few guests in many mountain huts at lunchtime, the comparatively complex supply and disposal and the extensive maintenance work on and around the hut are done during these times, as well as the further maintenance of the accesses and climbs, which usually up to a certain distance Hut warden is responsible.
Many of the mountain huts are only manned during the summer months. During the busy time, personnel planning at the hut is often difficult. Appropriate hut personnel must be sought and found for the coming weekends. In bad weather, however, it can happen that temporarily more staff than guests live in a hut; during longer periods of bad weather that the house is completely empty.
In general, hut attendants are regarded as the “soul of the mountain hut”, which is based on their often idealistic job profile and their personal commitment. In many places, hut keepers work in one and the same hut for a very long period of time and maintain close friendships all over the world. This passionate idealism, which has to be lived to a certain extent, is carried over to the culture of every hut. Often (married) couples share these tasks.
In addition, there are pure hut keepers for self-catering huts, in which no accommodation work takes place. Here, the responsible hut warden takes care of cleanliness and functionality as a sideline from time to time.
tasks
Buildings and infrastructure: maintenance of the building and infrastructure. Keeping the hut book . Providing meals and beverages. Some of the water has to be obtained by melting snow and ice and then boiling. Especially in the high mountains, water is a valuable commodity that must be paid for. Control of compliance with the hut rules. The most important rules are usually posted in the hut in the form of house rules. (It is forbidden to enter the bedrooms with mountain boots, for example.)
Guest care: taking reservations, allocation of sleeping places and a short tour of the hut. Providing information on current and future weather, snow conditions, avalanche risk, etc.
Very often the hut keeper's work also takes place “outside” outside the hut. Often the hikers or mountaineers are poorly equipped or not very suitable for the mountains. In many cases, the national maps required for a seriously planned tour are also missing. The hut warden pretends to be a guide and warns mountain tourists of imponderables.
Some of them don't let the hut warden stop them from a planned ascent. Here it is usually required that these people report back to the hut warden or to the next hut. If this feedback is not given, an emergency and rescue operation is often triggered as a precaution if the persons concerned cannot be reached otherwise. This is problematic in that such operations usually cause very high costs and, in the event of forgotten feedback, are accompanied by a false alarm. The consequence of such experiences is that it is often extremely difficult to bill those affected for the search costs incurred, which means that hut keepers only react when they are absolutely sure that help is really needed.
A winter room is often available during the unattended time. This room serves as a simple overnight accommodation with a few blanket beds, crockery, as well as cooking and fuel materials. If the access permits, the hut warden occasionally checks this winter area during the unattended time. The aim is to cover costs with a voluntarily paid tax, but often the taxes incurred are not paid. A closure of the winter rooms, as is already the case in other countries, is the logical consequence.
Training as a hut warden
In Austria, a hut warden does not have to be a trained innkeeper (no certificate of qualification for the hospitality industry for shelters, Section 111, Paragraph 2, Item 2 of the Trade Regulations ). Category III huts (alpine inns) are usually already subject to the concession requirement. The alpine clubs offer courses, according to the OEAV within the framework of the alpine club academy, and the local sections support the hut keepers / keepers.
Until 2008, the Swiss Alpine Club SAC held a one-week course for prospective hut keepers. However, this was not accepted throughout Switzerland. The canton of Valais, for example, still required a host patent for running a mountain hut. Then there were negotiations regarding the type and acceptance of future training for hut keepers. It was expected that a generally applicable regulation could be found by the end of 2008.
Web links
Single receipts
- ↑ http://www.sentiero.ch/docus_de/abhaenigkeit_huettenwart.pdf
- ↑ http://www.sentiero.ch/de11_personalpool-huette.htm
- ↑ Huts and trails ( Memento of the original from April 6, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , alpenverein-akademie.at
- ↑ http://www.sentiero.ch/docus_de/abklaerung_huettenwartkurs_2008.pdf
