The workers who worked the moraine of Prafleuri lived and slept there. In 1952, a real small village, made of twenty wooden barracks, emerged from the rocks. Today, only one of these huts remains, the only witness to one of the biggest projects that Switzerland has ever seen.
In the upper part of the Prafleuri valley, moraines and screes hide a rocky glacier. This one is made of blocks of rock cemented together by ice. During the excavation of the site, the workers discovered that it was almost impossible to extract these boulders. They had to move the extraction site a few dozen meters.
The Prafleuri glacier now stretches just over 1 km. Several hundred years ago, it stretched to the Val des Dix. The moraines there are evidence of his former majesty.
During the construction of the Grande Dixence, the gravel needed to build the dam was pulled from the moraines, just above the cabin. The boulders were crushed on the spot. For eight years, days and nights, a 1,600-metre treadmill transported 10 million cubic metres of gravel to the dam site on the other side of Mount Blava. The gravel was then mixed with cement transported by cable car from Sion.
