Huts & Refuges
The Finse Station as a Mountain House
Finse is the highest stop on the Bergen Line at 1,222 metres. The station and its adjacent DNT hut have functioned as a single mountain establishment for over a century.
cartography · The Lead
The BMC Route Database and the End of the Printed Guidebook
The British Mountaineering Council's online route system has grown to 140,000 routes. The printed guidebook is still being written. The two are arguing.
01
This week
In the field
From the editor
"Routes, refuges, and the silence above the snowline."
02
Dispatches
From the road
03
Beats
Where we file from
04
More reading
Worth your week
05
Stay a while
Long reads of the season
Cartography
Norwegian Kartverket and the Jotunheimen Revision
How the Norwegian Mapping Authority is re-drawing the contour lines of the country's roof, one ridge at a time.
Guides
What Guides Are Paid: A Survey of Six Mountain Ranges
The day rate of an alpine guide in 2026, compared across six ranges and four certification systems.
Huts & Refuges
The CIC Hut Under the North Face
The Charles Inglis Clark Memorial Hut sits in Coire Leis at 680 metres, almost directly under the Ben Nevis North Face. A century of climbing has passed through its door.
Routes
The South Ridge of the Aiguille du Tour: A First Alpine Climb
A patient account of the south ridge of the Aiguille du Tour, the route most often chosen as a first alpine summit in the Mont Blanc range.
Rescues
Soccorso Alpino Valdostano on the Grandes Jorasses
A spring storm on the Walker Spur caught two French climbers at the second band. The Aosta Valley rescue service brought them off the wall by long-line in a four-hour window between weather systems.
Snow
The Glaciologists of the Saint Elias
On an upper basin of the Kaskawulsh Glacier in Kluane National Park, a four-person research team spent twelve days in May measuring how fast a great mass of ice is changing.
Mountain Towns
Courmayeur, Italy, in Late Spring
Between the close of the ski lifts on the Cresta d'Arp and the opening of the via ferrata routes above Val Vény, a town of 2,800 at the foot of Mont Blanc takes its annual breath. A report from the Via Roma and the Skyway terminal.
Huts & Refuges
The Rifugio Bonatti as It Turns Eighteen
Built in 1998 on the high balcony route of the Val Ferret, the Rifugio Bonatti has become a familiar name to walkers of the Tour du Mont Blanc.
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Masthead
Contributors
The Sunday note
A short letter every Sunday morning.
One piece we published, one piece we read elsewhere, and a sentence on what we're working on next. No ads, no tracking.
Reader letters
What readers write back about.
Corrections, dissents, small additions, the occasional reminiscence about a piece we covered.
Read this week's letters →