Cabane de Bertol
Dramatically perched on a rocky spur above the Bertol glacier. A key waypoint on the Haute Route and approach for Dent Blanche and Ober Gabelhorn.
An iron-and-wood cabin perched on a granite spur at 3311 m above the Bertol icefall, reached at the top of an extraordinary 60-metre series of fixed ladders driven into the rock. The first Bertol hut, a tiny iron box accommodating eight climbers, was built by the Geneva section of the SAC in 1898; it was replaced by progressively larger structures in 1948 and 1978, with further extensions in 2005.
The Bertol's location was chosen because it sits at the top of the Col de Bertol, the natural pass between the Val d'Hérens and the upper Arolla glaciers, and because the spur of rock — fully exposed and visible from a long distance below — was high enough to clear the storm-cloud level on most summer days. It has become one of the most famous waypoints on the Haute Route, the multi-day high-glacier traverse from Chamonix to Zermatt established by the British Alpine Club as a summer crossing in 1903 and adapted into the modern ski-touring traverse in the late 1920s. Climbers approaching the Dent Blanche or the Ober Gabelhorn from the west use it as a base; for many haute-route travellers it is the most spectacular night of the week.
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