A 360° documentary expedition into the Plaine Morte Glacier’s hidden meltwater channels, 80 meters below the ice.
Tages-Anzeiger and Süddeutsche Zeitung, in collaboration with glacier researchers Frédéric Bétrisey and Hervé Krummenacher.
Filming a phenomenon that exists for only a few weeks a year, deep inside a moving glacier, in near-total darkness.
An award-winning multimedia story — Nannen Prize 2018 and Deutscher Reporterpreis 2017.
Eighty meters beneath the Plaine Morte Glacier, in total darkness, a lake drains through channels no one has mapped — twenty cubic meters of meltwater a second, vanishing into the heart of the ice. This is what Avocado360 went in to film.
The Plaine Morte Glacier, above Crans-Montana in the Swiss Alps, is one of the fastest-melting glaciers in the region — a visible marker of how quickly alpine ice is disappearing. Each summer, meltwater collects inside the glacier to form the Lac des Faverges, only to drain suddenly through hidden channels deep below the surface, releasing water at a staggering rate of up to 20 cubic meters per second.
For Avocado360, the assignment was to make that invisible process visible: to go inside the glacier itself and capture a phenomenon almost no one gets to see.
We joined cave researchers Frédéric Bétrisey and Hervé Krummenacher, who have spent years studying the glacier’s internal drainage system, on an expedition into its interior — descending through narrow ice tunnels formed over thousands of years to document a world that exists for only a few weeks each year before it collapses or refreezes.
The team worked at least 80 meters below the ice surface, in near-total darkness, guided only by helmet headlights. A 360° camera had to be maneuvered through passages barely wide enough to pass, capturing the scale and texture of ice walls formed thousands of years ago.
Sound design added a further layer — the drip of meltwater, the groan of shifting ice, the sound of a glacier slowly disappearing.
Avocado360 became the first Swiss team to win this award — one of the most prestigious journalism prizes in the German-speaking world — for multimedia storytelling.
Recognized in the Multimedia Storytelling category by the Reporter-Forum, one of Germany’s leading networks for narrative and investigative journalism.
The expedition became a multimedia story published in Tages-Anzeiger and Süddeutsche Zeitung, combining 360° visuals, sound and narrative text to bring the glacier’s disappearing world to a wide audience.
The original interactive multimedia piece, which won both awards, is still online at Tages-Anzeiger.
“Our mission wasn’t just to document a melting glacier — it was to unveil the hidden world beneath the ice, creating a visual legacy for the planet’s urgent realities.”
Journey to the Heart of a Glacier remains one of Avocado360’s most recognized projects — proof that immersive, 360° storytelling can carry real journalistic weight, not just spectacle. It’s the same production process — international collaboration, technical precision under extreme conditions, story-first thinking — that we bring to every project, from journalism to brand films. Explore our 360° VR video production work.
What is the Plaine Morte Glacier project about?
Avocado360 filmed inside the Plaine Morte Glacier in the Swiss Alps, documenting the hidden meltwater channels that drain the glacier's internal lake each summer, using 360° cameras and on-location sound design.
What awards did this project win?
The project won the Nannen Prize 2018 and the Deutscher Reporterpreis 2017, making Avocado360 the first Swiss team to receive the Nannen Prize.
Where can I watch the film?
The film is embedded above, and the original interactive multimedia story is still available at Tages-Anzeiger.
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