Refuge du Goûter

The Goûter shoulder has carried a shelter for ascents of Mont Blanc since the very early years of regular climbing on the mountain. The first stone Refuge du Goûter was built in 1854 at around 3800 m, replacing the open bivouac sites used by Saussure's porters; it was succeeded by progressively larger huts in 1898, 1960 and most recently 2013. The 1960 hut — a half-buried metal cylinder, universally nicknamed 'le saucisson' for its shape — became famous in the 1990s as a chronically overcrowded waypoint where reservations could not be enforced and parties slept in the boot room. The 2013 replacement, a four-storey stainless-steel pod designed by the Chambéry architect Hervé Dessimoz and the engineer Groupe-H, can house 120 climbers and runs on photovoltaic panels with composting toilets. Its construction was logistically extraordinary: every component had to be flown in by helicopter from the Plan de l'Aiguille.

The Goûter route's reputation is dominated less by the hut itself than by the Grand Couloir, the stone-swept gully a hundred metres below it that must be crossed on the approach. Stonefall in the couloir kills several climbers most summers; the prefecture has experimented with closing the route during heatwaves and installing a fixed cable, but no measure has yet stopped the accidents. The hut warden's daily safety briefing about couloir timing is now a fixture of the Mont Blanc summit experience.

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