There are two ways to plan a hut-to-hut trip in HutScanner, and the video below walks through both from a blank map to a bookable itinerary. If you would rather read than watch, the written version follows underneath.
Two ways in
Find a route for me. Best when you want something that works soon and are not fixed on exactly where you go. Tap any hut to make it your starting point, choose the range of dates you could set off in and the shortest and longest number of nights you would accept, and it searches for chains that actually have beds on consecutive nights.
Plot your own route. Best when you already have the trip in your head. Tap huts on the map in the order you will walk them, and it links them with real walking routes as you go.
Either way you end up in the same place: an itinerary with one row per night, and a colour on each night telling you whether that hut has space.
Reading the colours
The colour on a hut says how you can book it, not whether it is nice.
- Green means a live calendar. We read the hut's own booking system and refresh it daily, so the availability shown is what the hut is publishing.
- Blue means an online booking page but no calendar we can read. You will see the link, and you check the date yourself.
- Gold means phone or email only. Common for smaller and family-run huts, and often the ones worth the trouble.
Prefer green huts where the route allows it. They are the ones where a chain can be confirmed without a week of emails.
Finding dates that work
The part that makes this different from a list of huts is "best dates to book". Give it a window and it tries the whole chain across every start date in that window, and tells you which ones have every night available. Turn on swaps and it will also try substituting a nearby bookable hut for one of yours to get around a night that is full.
This is the step most people skip, and it is the one that turns four separate booking systems into a single answer.
Booking it
HutScanner does not book anything. It finds the nights that work and sends you to each hut's own reservation page, with the date you need. Payment, cancellation and the reservation itself all stay between you and the hut.
Export the plan when you are happy with it. You get the nights in priority order, with the huts that need a phone call first, because those are the ones that take days rather than minutes.
Taking it up the hill
The phone app bundles the maps, the hut network and your route onto the device, so the plan still works in a valley with no reception. Availability needs a connection, so check it before you set off.
Availability is synced from hut and club booking systems and is a best-effort guide, not a reservation. Always confirm directly with the hut.