Refuge des Cosmiques

The hut takes its name from the cosmic-ray observatory built on the col below the Aiguille du Midi by Louis Leprince-Ringuet's group in 1942, during the wartime occupation of Chamonix, which used the high altitude to study atmospheric particle physics. The CAF added a climbers' refuge to the observatory site in 1947, and after the observatory was dismantled in the 1950s the building was extended for purely alpinist use.

The modern Refuge des Cosmiques opened in 1992, replacing the wartime structure. On 9 August 1998 a serac collapse from the Tacul triangle slammed into the side of the hut at 5 a.m., shearing off the dormitory wing and killing two climbers asleep inside; the hut was rebuilt and reinforced over the following winter and reopened in 1999. The Cosmiques sits at 3613 m on the Cosmiques arête a few hundred metres from the Aiguille du Midi cable-car station, which makes it by some distance the easiest high hut in the Alps to reach. It is the starting point for the Trois Monts variant of the Mont Blanc ascent, the Cosmiques arête itself (a popular AD rock route back to the lift station), and most of the technical Chamonix needles.

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