Gianni Mittempergher
He has always lived and worked in the mountains, dedicating himself to hospitality and to promoting a careful and responsible approach to the Alpine environment. He has worked as a waiter and cook in mountain huts and as a shepherd in alpine pastures; for eight years he also managed a rural establishment known for its wide range of cultural activities. A member and former section president of SAT, since 2024 he has been managing the SAT Carè Alto “Dante Ongari” mountain hut.
The conversation with the manager of Rifugio Carè Alto opens a reflection on life in a mountain hut and on the practices that make its daily life possible.
Mountain huts emerged during the nineteenth century in response to new ways of traversing and engaging with alpine environments. Traces of the first British explorers can still be found today in the names of several peaks and mountain huts.
In the Province of Trento there are around 150 mountain huts, a number regulated by recent provincial legislation and considered proportionate to the size of the territory. Each hut tells a specific story about its relationship with the landscape that surrounds it and the transformations that shape it.
Built between 1911 and 1912, Rifugio Carè Alto is closely connected to the history of the nearby glacier. Over time, patterns of visitation have changed alongside the mountain itself: what was once a glacier that could be crossed relatively easily has become increasingly fragile and unstable. The hut stands within a landscape dominated by tonalite, the granitic rock named after the nearby Passo del Tonale.
At this altitude, the rifugio also becomes a privileged point from which to observe the effects of climate change. The transformations of the glacier and the ways in which people move through the mountains make visible the speed at which the alpine landscape is changing, linking the everyday reality of life in the hut to the broader environmental transformations of our time.
