It is enough to cross the threshold to understand why these establishments are called by the dog word "shelter". Stifling steam pours out of boots, legs in ski socks smelling of Savoy cheese hang down in the aisles. Tourists in dreadlocks toss and turn on bunk beds, guides in earplugs sleep in a ball like sled dogs. The cook cooks a stew, which at two o'clock in the morning will become dinner and breakfast at the same time. In these cramped sewers on the Alpine slopes you can shoot films about the lives of political prisoners or stage the play "The Lower Depths", but not spend a vacation.

You have your own traverse, not yet touched by the night ice, so that you can return home beautifully to a ready dinner.

Fortunately, this prison-like picture, familiar to anyone who has climbed Mont Blanc, does not exhaust the concept of an alpine refuge. In the highland zone there are huts with all the amenities and good double rooms (book two months in advance). Here you can spend a couple of days or a week, skiing in complete isolation from the ski resorts that many are tired of. Imagine an empty snow bowl in the blue twilight, along the edges of which you fly at a good speed, cutting a course for the light of the refuge and greeting the rangers closing the slopes for the night, shouting "don't worry, I live here." The ski lifts are turned off, all the descents into the valley are dug up by herds of resort bison, people are kneading the mud in the parking lots, but you don't need to go there. You have your own traverse, not yet touched by the night ice, so that you can return home beautifully for a ready dinner. Unfastening your skis, you turn around at the threshold, because behind you is a night that you won’t find at a resort. Instead of lanterns, there are stars and fireflies of snowcats crawling in the silence, instead of the diesel of ski buses and rental cars, there is the wood-burning smell of your own, the only one for one and a half thousand vertical meters of pipe. Those who live at the resort have another bar after dinner, and you have your first snowshoe exit into outer space with a bar in your pocket. Guests of the shelters like to walk with a flask through the alpine meadows covered with a three-meter layer of snow and illuminated by the moon.

The best high-mountain huts belong to the children and grandchildren of famous guides or climbers. They have an autonomous power supply, including miniature hydroelectric stations and solar panels, good wine and slippers for each guest. During the day, these establishments are teeming with ordinary skiers who have dropped off the slopes for lunch, and by evening only their own people, about ten inveterate powder lovers, remain. Access here is only possible on skis from the top of the ski area, so luggage for the entire trip must fit in a backpack. When choosing a shelter, you need to carefully study the lift map and make sure that you can go down to the door. Otherwise, you will have to take ski touring skis "on skins" and learn to walk up them - the staff of some shelters lift several kegs of beer on their own backs every morning. You will have to live at an altitude of two to three thousand meters - some people have trouble sleeping with a pounding heart in the thin air. On the other hand, there is no need to rush, because you are having breakfast on a mountain that holidaymakers will climb in an hour at best.

These heavenly lodgings, conveniently integrated into the lift system, with separate rooms, a delicious restaurant with organic products, and your own shower and toilet, are in short supply. It is useless to look for them in areas of mass ski demand like the Three Valleys, Val d'Isere, Zermatt or Sölden. The resort you will be towering over must be wild and developed for freeriding, like the Italian Monte Rosa.

The author is the general director of the travel agency "Island Europe"

Evgeniy Zhadkevich: Paradise Flophouse