Glacier 3000

Glacier · canton of Vaud · 2525 m

Glacier area above Gstaad and Les Diablerets, with its Peak Walk suspension bridge.

From the basket

Above Les Diablerets, between Vaud and Valais, the Tsanfleuron glacier is the largest of the massif. From the balloon it looks like a white sheet laid over an almost flat plateau, sliding gently towards the east, beneath the southern wall of the Becca d’Audon. At the very top it begins under the dome of the Diablerets, at about three thousand metres.

To the north-west, a very wide pass links it to a more modest glacier, the Sex Rouge, facing Vaud. On the Valais side, the glacier belongs almost entirely to the municipality of Savièse. Far off to the east stands out the Sanetsch pass.

Because it is low and gently sloped, this glacier reacts quickly to the climate. Around 1850 it covered more than seven square kilometres and its ice stretched three kilometres further east, to the approaches of the Sanetsch. Today it has lost more than half its surface, and it thins by about one metre forty a year. In some summers even its upper part is no longer covered in snow. If the trend continues, it could disappear around 2038.

Fly over it slowly, from west to east, following the ice to its edge, then let yourself be carried towards the crests of the Diablerets.

Did you know?

In the summer of 2022, after a heatwave and a winter almost without snow, the Tsanfleuron pass reappeared. It had lain buried for some two thousand years. Ten years earlier, the ice there was still fifteen metres thick.

Sources: Wikipedia, “Glacier de Tsanfleuron” (in French).

All around

• Moléson, 2002 m, 28 km to the north-west
• Dents du Midi, 3257 m, 29 km to the south-west
• Grand Combin, 4314 m, 45 km to the south