Video: One Big, Gigantic, #%^&ing Huge, Massive AVALANCHE
This happened a few months ago, at the ski resort I spent last winter at in New Zealand.
Following a few days of Heavy storms, the skifield re-opened despite the possibility of avalanches. Wednesday brought clear blue skies, and some really good skiing. The loading was huge. Patrol was out kicking off small avalanches in an area not far from the runs that were open to the public. Before the week was over, four class four and five avalanches rolled down the mountain. The most prolific one ended up sliding slowly along a gully INSIDE THE BOUNDARIES as people were skiing in the area. (oops!) It ended up crushing the top three towers of a T-bar. that closed down the resort for the day, as they dug out.
Here's a photo of the slide path.
news report more news
http://www.tetongravity.com/usergall..._avalanche.jpg
A couple more 3000 footers slid just west of the boundary, and the big one went on Thursday.
Thursday morning, we were back open for business as usual, with a strong advisory to avoid backcountry travel. (You can duck any rope, any time here). At about 4 PM, I had just quit for the day, and noticed all my friends sitting around the base area staring up at a couple of helicopters buzzing around. I hung out to see what was going on, and soon learned that as soon as patrol was finishing sweep, there would be a nice explosives show, put on by the ski patrol guys up in the heli.
Cool.
What followed was one of the most amazing things I have ever witnessed in my entire life. The eastern boundary of the skifield has a huge bowl that’s probably big enough to hide any other average sized ski resort inside. this bowl, and the glacier in it, create a huge gully that flows over 6000 vertical feet down to the plains below. The snow level ends about 2/3 of the way down to sea level. And the base lodge is only a couple of small ridges over.
They blew the glacier, and created one giant mothafuggin avalanche. The crown was over 1 kilometer across, and the slide went on for probably more than six kilometers. Six minutes later, there was still snow moving. as the slide passed by the lodge, on the other side of the ridge, I saw a cloud of snow rise 150 feet in the air.
The slide was started on the hill just behind me in this picture, and the fracture reached clear across to the far peak in the distance. The slide traveled beyond the bottom right of this photograph.
http://www.tetongravity.com/usergall...1/normal_5.JPG
This event didn’t make the news like the slide from the previous day, but this was much more interesting to watch.
I got a copy of the video from one of the patrollers in the heli. It’s 100 megabytes in size, so sorry if you have a dialup. It’s split it up into two 3min / 50 mb clips. Most of the action is in the first clip, but the second half is pretty decent, too. turn your speakers on for this.
Anyways, here's the clips
www.eengoedidee.nl/parsefiles/?type=skiing&filename=avy1.mpg First three minutes of event.
www.eengoedidee.nl/parsefiles/?type=skiing&filename=avy2.mpg final three minutes
