At a Meeting of the Swiss Glacier Commission on 12 December 1953 the work carried out during that year was reviewed.
Professors P. L. Mercanton and A. Renaud had continued their annual investigation of glacier fluctuation throughout the country. During the year Professor Mercanton had also published a study on the glacier fluctuation in Switzerland between 1877 and 1927, a note on which has already been published in this Journal (Vol. 2, No. 15, 1954, p. 315).
Considerable activity is now taking place at the Jungfraujoch and on the Aletsch Glacier. At the Joch measurements of the deformation and displacement of the ice in a tunnel in the zone of permafrost on the Hotel Plateau, the so-called Eiscalotte, are in progress, as also in situ on ice plasticity in a cold laboratory ; all this work is under the personal supervision of Professor R. Haefeli, the President of the Commission.
A new ice tunnel for glaciological experiments has been started in the Eiscalotte, by permission of the Federal Post Office Department (P.T.T.). This runs north and south at right angles to the main tunnel. During the summer and autumn the periodical meteorological, glaciological and hydrological observations were made on the Aletsch Glacier by P. Kasser on behalf of the E.T.H., Zürich (the Institute of Hydraulic and Soil Mechanics), in cooperation with the Commission. These included the reconnoitring of a site for a meteorological station near the end of the glacier.
During the year the Commission also assisted in the planning and carrying out of the Tournée Glaciologique (1953) of the Société Hydrotechnique de France, Section de Glaciologie (S.H.F.). The object of this tour was to make an inspection of the Great Aletsch Glacier.
Work both hydrological and glaciological was also carried out in many other parts of Switzerland, including the very important investigations on the Unteraar Glacier by Dr. W. Jost.
Finally, the Commission lent support to some of the glaciological work carried out by A. Roch for the Swiss Dhaulagiri Expedition. The great present activity of the Commission is evident.
