Refuge de Tête Rousse
Lower hut on the Voie des Cristalliers (Goûter route) to Mont Blanc, sitting just below the Grand Couloir. Often used in tandem with the Refuge du Goûter when bookings higher up are full.
The first Refuge de Tête Rousse was built on the moraine below the Aiguille du Goûter in 1898 to break up the long approach to Mont Blanc from Saint-Gervais; it has been rebuilt twice, most recently in 1953. The hut owes its modern notoriety to the lake. In summer 2010 hydrological survey discovered a 65,000 m³ subglacial lake trapped beneath the Tête Rousse glacier, with the potential — if it broke through the ice dam — to flood the village of Saint-Gervais 8 km below. The French authorities ran an emergency pumping operation in August and September 2010, draining the lake through a network of hoses while the hut itself stood empty under threat of evacuation. The 1892 outburst from the same glacier had killed 175 people in Saint-Gervais and remains the deadliest natural disaster in modern French Alpine history; the 2010 drainage prevented a feared repeat.
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