Alaskan Alpine Club seeks permit for new Alaska Range hut near Healy

A Fairbanks-based climbing club wants to add one of Alaska's rarest amenities to the backcountry: a new mountain hut. The Alaskan Alpine Club has applied for a state land use permit to build a hut at the base of Nenana Mountain in the Alaska Range, roughly 41 miles southwest of Healy, according to a public notice posted Monday.

The filing matches a project the club has already announced to its members: its website lists establishing a new mountain hut in the Central Alaska Range among its current efforts, alongside supporting the Eastern Alaska Range Avalanche Center and preserving the photographs and journals of Alaska's climbing history.

Alaska's alpine huts are a small, scattered network kept alive mostly by volunteer clubs, and they run on a trust model rare in the Lower 48 — doors unlocked, bunks first-come, a few dollars in the donation box. Each new hut opens a piece of remote country to skiers and climbers and adds an emergency shelter where there was none.

The application now sits with the state's northern land office in Fairbanks, which can issue permits running up to five years, with conditions attached.