Seduction, casualwear, defending a one-goal lead — the list of skills at which the Italians outstrip us is long and distinguished, but it requires an addition: they’ve got this mountaineering lark absolutely nailed down.

While our wannabe Boningtons and Simpsons are bivouacking on ledges and digging ice holes on the dark side of Ben Nevis, Italian mountain maestros are huddling round a lasagne al forno and cracking open the Valpolicella in a steamed-up mountain hut in the shadow of their grandest peaks. And while you’re unlikely to make an epic survival movie about this inspired network of civilised shelters against the storm (“If I can just. .. reach... the... salt”), their location and welcome are a pretty unbeatable combination. Notch up another to the Italians — they know by far the most enjoyable and sensible route to something every European should see at least once: the lost valleys and clustered peaks of the high Alps.

My rifugio revelation came last year, on a group trek to the summit of Gran Paradiso, the highest mountain that’s wholly in Italy (Monte Bianco being, if they’re honest, mostly Mont Blanc) and widely considered the easiest 4,000-metre summit in the Alps. Approached via a four-day hut-to-hut walk, and supposedly requiring little more than decent lungs and a head for heights, conquering Gran Paradiso was intended to be my bite-sized adventure for the year, an epic anecdote earned with the minimum of effort. My suspicions that things might be otherwise were first raised when our guide, Judy, marched into the Argentière chalet that served as our starting point, took one look at my expensive and fashionably flimsy walking boots, and sent me straight off to rent some footwear that might have saved Beagle 2. Just how hard was this going to be?

Initially, thank heavens, not hard at all. For four days we followed the benign rhythm of alpine walking, ascending through the layers of rough meadows, ragged boulder fields and barren scree slopes to reach a high pass, taking in a lunchtime vista that was worth the flight all by itself, then steeling the knees for the daily descent towards the smell of wood smoke, socks and garlic, and the hut for the night. Whistling marmots bundled out of our path with the lazy, rolling gait of blow-dried bulldogs, herds of chamois skittered over the horizon at a canter and, in the absence of TVs, radios or mobile-phone reception to offer any evidence to the contrary, it was hard not to assume that all was right with the world.

And each evening, we gathered with a motley, pan-European crew of trekkers, climbers and their scarily hearty, harmonious children to learn the rules of rifugio living. Or just the one rule, in fact: don’t be shy. If you loved spending last summer in a kibbutz, but just wished it had been a bit more communal, a rifugio is the place for you.

The delicious, generous, carboidrato-heavy meals are served at long, rowdy pine benches, followed by wine and card games into the night — but not too late, mind, as people have to sleep on these tables. If you do secure a bed, you’re not alone: six to a room is boutique; and one hut (mercifully not on this itinerary) has a 48-berth dorm, with just four epic wall-to-wall beds, where you sardine with 11 strangers in an arrangement more likely to produce a sexual-harassment suit than a good night’s sleep.

Even in a one-man bunk, as you lie awake appreciating the Wagnerian snore-chorus as it rattles around the room, or wondering how to reach the loo in darkness and silence (my cat-like efforts to descend from a third-tier bunk in the night woke half the hut and left me limping for a week), it’s just possible you might ask yourself if this really counts as a holiday. But any doubts about your accommodation are summarily dispelled in the first 100 paces of every morning. Because if you want to wake up on the wild side of the Alps — and trust me, you really, truly want to see these views — it’s either the huts or sleeping in a plastic bag on an exposed hillside. Any volunteers?

AND ON the fifth day, the Lord created nerves — a whole bag of them. We’d reached the Rifugio Vittorio Emanuele the night before, in the lee of the hulking, 4,061-metre lump of rock and ice that is Gran Paradiso, in time to greet the grinning, sun-parched faces of those climbers who’d just finished their haul to the summit. The Eton College mountaineering club were there, and reported reaching the top with effortless superiority — only to find a local climber already up, with his eight-year-old son in tow.

Next day, we were up earlier than kids at Christmas, primed with bread and coffee, and led off in a seven-dwarves-style procession of headlamps through the darkest hour, following the sound of a stream towards the foot of Gran Paradiso’s snowfields. By dawn, we were digging our crampons into the thick crust of ice on the sweeping lower slopes (it might sound adventurous; it’s actually about as tricky as putting one foot in front of the other) and shedding layers as the rising sun ricocheted viciously off the snow. After a three-hour plod, with the view alternating between half an hour staring at the back of someone else’s boots and five minutes sitting down and soaking up the ever-improving high-altitude scenery, we reached the rocky summit, with just a few simple steps separating us from the top of Italy.

Or, the summit can also be reached via a 20-minute demonstration of what would happen if humans and limpets ever bred, accompanied by a relentless stream of toxic language and breathless demands of “Don’tletmegodon’t-letmegoDON’TLETMEGO!!”, depending on how well you respond to being a few feet away from a 400-metre sheer drop straight onto a glacier. As I hugged the ankles of the summit statue of Santa Maria (stand up? Not a chance), I considered my dignity a perfectly acceptable swap for my safety, and slowly began to take in the view.

It was 360 degrees of “memory, don’t fail me now” magic — serrated peaks, distant valleys and, once you got used to it, that stomach-tumbling drop. The Alps sparkled in the July sun — but to Judy’s experienced eyes, not all the sparkle was in place, as she pointed out the visible impacts of our cosier climate, best seen from above: glaciers in retreat, snowfields turning slushfields, gullies turned dangerous by the whipcrack of falling stones released from an icy security that had lasted centuries. Not everything, it appears, is right with the world.

Shorter-term rising of the mercury was our immediate concern, though, as we had to descend across a glacier before the heat of the day opened the crevasses too wide to cross. We scarcely had time to appreciate the glorious ice-blue palette of these cavernous tombs, as we took running jumps over the gaps and down the mountain, looking out for the tin roof of our well-earned rest, Rifugio Chabod.

That night, cold beers were sunk, a mountain of pasta was conquered guilt-free, postcards were scribbled (with any shameful summit panics quietly censored away) and, I suspect, some kind of snoring record was broken. Thankfully, at the end of a magical week, I’d learn the real golden rule of rifugio life — if you’re tired enough, you’ll sleep through anything.

Brian Schofield travelled as a guest of KE Adventure Travel

Factfile: KE Adventure Travel is organising six Gran Paradiso treks in 2006, from June to September, for £895 for eight days, with five nights in rifugi, half-board. Flights are not included. Also try Mountain Tracks. You should be fit, with a head for heights, but mountain experience is not essential. A full list of the Italian huts is available at www.cai.it

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