Rifugio Vajolet

Rifugio Vajolet has stood at the foot of the Vajolet Towers since 1897, when the German alpine club DuÖAV built it on a rocky spur called Porte Neigre. It became home base for Tita Piaz, a climber born in the valley below. After a particularly wild day in 1898 when he soloed seven peaks in eight hours, guide Luigi Bernard took one look at him and said, “Tu sei un demonio,” you are a devil. The name stuck for the rest of his career.

The refuge itself keeps a more modest schedule than its most famous guest ever did. It opens in June and shuts again by late September or October, sealing off the dining hall, the bunk rooms, the kitchen that turns out plates of fortaes to hikers who’ve just spent two hours climbing up from Gardeccia. What stays open through winter is a small unheated room bolted onto the side, stocked for anyone caught out in weather that has no patience for a closed sign. Snow piles against the same blue and white walls that once sheltered a man who ran down ridges without a rope. It waits there, mostly alone, until someone walks back up the mule track in June and turns the water back on.