Two passes behind St. Moritz: a night at the Jenatschhütte

St. Moritz is where the Alps go to be seen. Two valleys behind it stands a stone hut with no road, no showers and no phone signal, and the walk to it is the best thing I have done out of that town.

A cable car lifted us out of the resort and onto the trail, straight past the slow part. Excitement did the rest, briefly too well: talking, we missed the turn at the first lake and wandered downhill the wrong way round the water. A hundred metres of climbing bought the lesson back. I carry an offline map in the mountains for exactly this, because signs vanish and instinct lies.

The pass above was rock from the first switchback, paint marks on boulders instead of a path. One of us was new to this and went quiet, then kept going anyway, which is all mountains ever ask. From the top the trail fell into a green valley of streams, and at the far end of it, right at dinner time, the hut.

Hut night at altitude: my message home went by the hut's satellite phone, washing happened in a sink of freezing water, and the table filled with strangers who all had stories, because nobody ends up here by accident. When the sun dropped behind the ridge, the cold arrived like a door opening. August, and we could see our breath.

I was outside again before sunrise, watching the light find the peaks in complete silence. Then on over two more passes towards Alp Flix, through a valley of clay-red rock and one pale blue lake, past a tent pitched by a couple braver than us. Two days, two worlds, one cable car from the fur coats.