‘Like a Bond villain’s lair’: I climbed the Dolomites to the world’s most spectacular mountain hut

‘Santnerpass Hut is perched on a sheer cliff and resembles a giant Toblerone still in its foil – an eye-popping hit of modernity and innovation’. Photograph: Andrew Gilchrist

‘I think my boots are falling apart!” shouts Nigel just as we hit the pinnacles, a whole range of them jutting up and out from the mountainside, all thrillingly tall, spiky and knobbled. Through them we painstakingly step, fingers aching in gloves, heads sweating in helmets – squashing up narrow chimneys, squeezing through mighty boulders and inching along slender ledges on a twisting path that’s only just discernible through swathes of sharp white scree.

I know how Nigel’s boots are feeling: the going is far harder than I was expecting. This is only the first day of our annual trip to the Dolomites, a vast range of breathtaking sawtooth peaks in northern Italy, but my head’s already full of the thought I have every year as we start out: “If only you’d got fitter.”