Winter 2025 fieldwork at Tsanfleuron

Audon springs now on the cloud

On Saturday 22nd november, after a first heavy snowfall on the Diablerets massif, Tanguy and Antoine, a colleague from the CHYN went up to the Audon springs with skitouring equipment. The original plan was to take the cable car up to the Glacier 3000 ski resort, but high winds and very cold conditions on the glacier prevented them from using this route.

Instead, they parked at the foot of the Audon valley and followed the piste up to Oldenalp. From then on, they broke a new trail to the springs in about 50 cm of new snow. At the springs, they exchanged the existing pressure-conductivity probe for a 4G enabled one and fixed the antenna on the wall overhanging the pressure sensor and timelapse camera.

Back at the lab, Tanguy was able to log in to the Pressure Suite Cloud in order to check that data transmission was successful. It was!

Recovering some pressure sensors

On Tuesday 2nd of December, a team composed of Domitille, Prune and Tanguy kitted up for a long ski tour from Glarey to the Plan de la Fontaine and then onwards to the lowermost point of the Tsanfleuron glacier in order to bring back some pressure sensors.

Already, the heavy snowfalls and wind redistribution of the snowpack remodelled the topography, and despite having the GPS coordinates, finding the probes under near 2 m of snow proved difficult. In total, only 1 in 3 probes could be recovered at this time. On top of this, the long distance, significant height gain and limited number of daylight hours make winter fieldwork at Tsanfleuron challenging for simple day trips.

Still, the data recovered from the Plan de la Fontain pressure and conductivity logger are sure to be a great help in better characterising the melt dynamics of the Tsanfleuron glacier and the discharge characteristic of the ephemeral Lachon river.