The mountain hiking virus has hit us hard! In the summer of 2020 we went on a number of wonderful multi-day hut hikes in Austria, Switzerland and Italy. During the preparations we found out that it takes a good amount of thinking and surfing the web to find hikes that are suitable for our relatively inexperienced 7 and 10 year old mountain goats. What can they handle? When does it get too scary, too steep or too tiring? We’ve put a lot of information on our new website: huthikingwithkids.com. Come and take a look!
Walking time and walking level
How do you determine the right amount of hours to walk per day? That’s a tricky one. After some consideration we focused on about 3 to 4 hours of walking per day (net walking time, excluding breaks and swimming) and about 700 ascending and 1000 (not too steep) descending altimeters. We took into account that we would start the hikes relatively (say very) untrained, that our children can walk quite well, listen well and have no fear of heights.
Our advice is not to put too many hiking hours in your days. At nearly all the huts you can do extra climbs if the day wasn’t hard enough, but if the hiking is too tough and too long it’s damn hard to keep the good spirits up.
Stijn is the only one in our household who is afraid of heights, so all hikes with long stretches of cables, chains and ladders are excluded. Hikes that contain small pieces with steep sections and deep abysses are possible, but only if we don’t have to secure ourselves. We don’t take harnesses and ropes with us.
Gathering information
On the internet relatively little information can be found about doing multi-day hut hikes with children. Except for a few sites that offer paid information there is not much to find about hiking in the Alps with children. Information about single day hikes is easy to find, but even then it is quite complicated to assess what the difficulty of the hikes is. A short hike that looks easy on paper can be very challenging in reality, with steep abysses and tricky climbs with ropes and ladders. Our experience is that steep descents are much more difficult for children to control than steep ascents. In general, children tend to go too fast when descending. Descending requires much more technical control for children than ascending (and requires nerves of steel for the parents…).
It is usually quite easy to find out how long a hike is and how many altimeters one has to conquer. Also, you can generally find an altitude profile for a hike. But how perilous a hiking route really is, is more complicated to find out. Fortunately, Outdooractive, Bergwelten, Deine Berge and Bergfex offer some solution. Most of these sites are in German and English. With a bit of research you can find out more about the terrain and the hiking level. This will give you the necessary information about what the hikes look like, whether they contain difficult steep passages with chasms on both sides or long stretches with cables and ladders. You can also get useful information from other hikers’ reviews or travel reports.
In addition, the websites of mountain huts contain a lot of useful information, especially about the hiking times to nearby huts and hiking levels. A beautiful website for instance is the site of the Büllelejochhütte in the Dolomites, in Italian Rifugio Pian di Cengia. You immediately will feel the urge to put on your mountain boots when looking at this website!
Examples of multi-day hut hikes that are suitable for children
The following multiday hikes are – in our opinion – suitable for children with some walking experience (and parents with a little fear of heights). The daily distances are not too long on these hikes. If necessary you can do short extra climbs at almost all huts to make the hiking day more challenging, or you can go swimming.
We have walked four of these multiday hikes ourselves in 2020, the remaining hikes we will save for the near future. The description of the hikes includes some information about the facilities in the mountain huts. We advise you to check the facilities for each hut before you go on your hike. For example, it is very important to know if there is drinking water in the hut. Buying drinking water for 4 persons can be very expensive. It’s also useful to find out if you have to pay in cash, and where in the valley you can withdraw money before you start the trip. That did not always go smoothly for us. Before you know it, you will have to drive 20 kilometer backwards to find an ATM. So calculate how much cash you are going to need and withdraw enough money, at least a day in advance. Don’t wait until the last minute to do this.
Hiking times
Our experience is that you will have to multiply the walking times indicated on the signposts by at least 1.5, usually even by 2 (especially in Switzerland). You really do need that extra time with all the eating, swimming, peeing and pooping breaks and the slightly slower than average walking pace.
https://www.huthikingwithkids.com/preparations/hiking-levels/Hiking levels
We use the Swiss hiking scale during our hikes. We hiked mainly level T2 and T3.
Booking mountain huts
Most mountain huts can be booked online, though some huts can only be booked by phone. Some of the huts of the alpine clubs can be booked (and cancelled) online at Alpsonline.org, which is very convenient.
We always make reservations well in advance. Taking your chances without a reservation in the high season is asking for trouble. You do not want to be forced to walk to another cabin or the valley with a bunch of tired children in the afternoon because there are no sleeping places left.
Eating and sleeping
Almost all huts offer half board. Without exception, the food is nutritious and delicious, packed with the necessary carbohydrates and fats. You can save costs by buying the food separately, which is usually an option in the larger huts. We however think half board is a good deal.
When it comes to beds, we almost always choose the cheapest option – in a dormitory (Lager). We think that this is perfectly fine. Sometimes rooms for four or six persons are available (at extra costs). The beds will have a pillow and a blanket. Because of corona we had to bring our own sleeping bags and pillowcases. Normally all you will have to bring is a liner.
You are not allowed to walk in on your outdoor shoes in the huts. You will put your shoes and hiking poles in a separate (drying) room. You will have to bring a pair of flip-flops or crocs. Some huts will have these, but don’t assume this is the case.
What to carry with you?
Unfortunately, an universal packing list for a hut hike does not exist. It all depends on how long you will be on the way and in what terrain you will be hiking. A very important advice is: ’take less than you think you need to take’. You really don’t need 4 pairs of socks and 5 pairs of undies. 1 spare of all your clothes is enough. In all huts you can rinse out your clothes and in most huts they will have a drying room.
What do we find absolutely essential?
Alpenverrein en verzekering
As a foreigner you can become a member of a local mountaineering club. We (Dutch) have become a member of the Österreichische Alpenverein. This will give us a discount in most mountain huts and will provide us with mountain sports insurance – indispensable if you have to be taken off the mountain by helicopter.
