‘It started with a toilet’: the hikers’ hut cleaning up Georgia’s Mount Kazbek

The AltiHut began as a way of solving the problems caused by too many human visitors, and evolved into the country’s first mountain hostel

Dawn comes at a little past 7am, when the early September sun pokes its head over the ridges east of the northern Georgian town of Stepantsminda, and paints the glaciers and knife edges of Mount Kazbek in hues of peach and magenta.

On the wooden deck where I stand, shivering, I alternate blowing the steam off a cup of coffee with struggling to capture the glorious light on my phone or in scribbles in a notebook.