In 1827 Franz Joseph Hugi, a teacher from Solothurn, built a small stone cabin between two granite blocks on the Unteraar glacier, high above the Grimsel. When he came back in 1830 it stood about 700 m further down. In 1836 he crossed the glacier on horseback: by his own measure it had travelled 1,315 m. Nobody had moved it. The glacier was carrying it, flowing like a very slow river.

In 1840 scientists from Neuchâtel came to measure the flow. They slept under a boulder on the ice and called it the Hôtel des Neuchâtelois. Their guides, Jakob Leuthold, son of the Grimsel hospice keeper, and Hans Währen, had worked for Hugi, and they camped on solid ground. Within a few summers the moving ice had split the hotel apart, and in 1843 the next shelter went up about 100 m above the glacier, where the guides had camped. Its successor is the Lauteraarhütte SAC (2,392 m), rebuilt in 1931 around the old one.

Which hut have you slept in above a glacier?

Sources: P. Soland, Chronologische Geschichte der Lauteraarhütte (SAC Zofingen); D. Dollfus-Ausset, Matériaux pour l'étude des glaciers (1863-70); G. K. C. Clarke, Journal of Glaciology 33 (1987); F. J. Hugi, Naturhistorische Alpenreise (1830); Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz.

Photo: Lauteraarhütte, by Arkelin (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0). Terrain produced using Copernicus WorldDEM-30, © DLR e.V. 2010-2014 and © Airbus Defence and Space GmbH 2014-2018, provided under COPERNICUS by the European Union and ESA. Glacier outline © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL). Sounds: Freesound (CC0); Eelke, Akkaittou, dheming, F.M.Audio and dobroide (CC BY 4.0).