Amenities, none. Access, difficult. View, incomparable. Photo: Marco Milani
Weekend Cabin: Solvay Hut
Amenities, none. Access, difficult. View, incomparable
Weekend Cabin isn’t necessarily about the weekend, or cabins. It’s about the longing for a sense of place, for shelter set in a landscape…for something that speaks to refuge and distance from the everyday. Nostalgic and wistful, it’s about how people create structure in ways to consider the earth and sky and their place in them. It’s not concerned with ownership or real estate, but what people build to fulfill their dreams of escape. The very time-shortened notion of “weekend” reminds that it’s a temporary respite.
Deaths from lightning, cold, snow, and other hazards were common on the Matterhorn in the late 1800s, so the idea of erecting an emergency shelter high on the Hörnligrat, then and now its most popular route, seemed a good idea. But not to Swiss mountain guides, who worried that a hut would make the ascent easier and cut into their work. From 1904, when twenty thousand francs were donated for construction, it took
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