Spending a couple of hours hiking up a mountain? Sure. Short-changing or even robbing the warden? I hope not.

Sure, many cabins operate on a honor code. People hiking in this harsh environment respect the hospitality. If you don't have that kind of respect around the mountains, you won't fathom going there anyway.

And yeah, it's a high-trust society. In some farms you'll find a fridge where you can get local produce and leave your payment in the box. Especially so in the mountains where they make their own cheese. You'll find me lugging a nice cut of cheese back home from a Sunday hike. That box will be locked though, because there's more people passing than at a remote cabin :-)

In reasonably prosperous societies that take care of all their members and lack the cult of individualism, this is quite normal. Visible inequality, corruption, systemic persecution, and dire poverty tend to erode trust.

Perhaps... But Switzerland is one of the most atomised, individualistic societies I've lived in. Swiss social trust mostly comes from an abundance of means, as far as I can tell. When you've got a full belly and a roof over your head, crime just isn't as attractive.

Its part of culture. The state is not centralized (canton over federal), which makes each state independent and highly individualistic.

This ethos percolates down, well beyond empowering the minority via direct democracy: its shameful on the individual to not carry one's weight. The smallest unit is the one to trust.

Contrast that to other collectivist societies, with top heavy bureaucracies, where the top literally cannot carry their weight (debt/deficits) and the populace is always looking for the biggest bureaucracy to rescue them.

There's no trust in people, because people are competing to weaponize the large state to screw... you.

On the country side you can buy fresh fruits from small unattended shops on the side of the roads: you take a fruit basket and leave the money in a jar. (I only saw this in the Swiss German part, though).

I'm familiar with the roadside produce and the honor box, but for some reason an actual dwelling being open to all, or to just be assumed that by default it is open to all, I guess caught me off guard. Assuming something like that would be open to all, here, would be a dangerous assumption on my part. I don't think I initially took into account the extreme weather conditions during that time, which in retrospect makes a lot more sense.

It's common in the Swiss French part too.

Oh yeah, 100%, just last week I went to an unmanned stall by the road and bought some beans, left the money in the jar.

Pretty common round here. (in NZ)

In wilderness parts of the US you are usually allowed, by law, to break into unoccupied cabins/homes in critical situations (eg blizzard, you're lost, etc). You're required to leave identification and contact info and pay for any damages and/or supplies used.

Often people just leave remote dwellings like that unlocked and stocked with supplies, sometimes with a signature book and/or donation box. For larger places some people even build a separate cabin next to the main house for travelers to use.