This was announced by State Secretaries Susanne Kraus-Winkler and Claudia Plakolm as well as three representatives of alpine clubs at a press conference in Vienna on Thursday.
The project is financed from tourism funding from the Ministry of Labour and Economic Affairs. The four buildings are the Reichenstein Hut in the Ennstal Alps and the Hochmölbinghütte in the Totes Gebirge – both in Styria -, the Bleckwand Hut in Strobl in Salzburg and the Peter-Anich-Hütte in the Stubai Alps in Tyrol.
The Styrian Reichenstein Hut, built in 1898, is getting a replacement building. “The damaged structure of the hut makes the replacement building unavoidable,” said Markus Welzl, Vice President of the Austrian Alpine Association, who also noted: “Building on a mountain costs about 2.5 times as much as building a hut in the valley.” The architectural competition is currently underway. The principle is “as large as necessary, as small as possible” – this applies to all mountain huts, explained Welzl.
The Peter Anich Hut in the Tyrolean Oberland is being renovated. Work is scheduled to begin in autumn 2025.
The Bleckwandhütte in Salzburg and the Hochmölbinghütte in Styria, which was built in 1924 and extensively adapted for the last time in 1954, will also be renovated, as Andreas Schieder, chairman of the Austrian Friends of Nature, explained. The former is to be renovated this year, while the renovation of the latter will begin in 2025.
Further help possible
However, the current funding will not be the only support. “In addition to the immediate package that will be made available this year, around 92 million euros will be needed from 2025 onwards to make urgent major investments,” said Gerald Dunkel-Schwarzenberger, President of the Association of Alpine Clubs in Austria. State Secretary for Tourism Kraus-Winkler accordingly announced further help beyond the current legislative period: “It is absolutely clear that we will continue to pursue the issue intensively after the election.”
Hardly any hut can finance the maintenance costs from the ongoing hut operation. Climate change will bring further challenges for the hut operators in the future. “Climate change has arrived in the Alps,” said Dunkel-Schwarzenbacher. The drought is so dramatic that huts have to be closed again and again. In addition, there are stricter legal regulations, which “of course make sense,” as Andreas Schieder emphasized, and make modernization just as necessary as signs of wear and tear.
“Shelters are places of refuge”
Regardless of the current campaign, the criteria for a refuge to be able to receive funding at all are, according to Kraus-Winkler, designed in such a way that “no distortion of competition occurs to the detriment of regional gastronomy”. The conditions include the availability of at least ten sleeping places for guests, and the walking time from the nearest public area that can be reached by private or public transport must be at least half an hour. State Secretary for Volunteers Claudia Plakolm said: “Refugees are places of refuge and fill a gap where tourism can no longer provide the infrastructure.”
There are 272 mountain huts in the Austrian Alps. The voluntary alpine associations look after a network of trails covering 50,000 kilometers. Plakolm illustrated this distance: “The circumference of the earth is 40,000 kilometers.”