Impressive avalanche video

[skea 457]

Caution 96.2 MB, BIG file, BIG avalanche.

Mt Ruapehu, NZ, September 2003. There is a ski area on each side of this mountain (volcano) but it doesn't seem to have headed in that direction.

http://patrol.mammothmountain.com/mo...pehu030906.mpg

[summit]

is this the one that runs for 2 minutes and 2 miles (slab triggers wet)?

[skea 457]

is this the one that runs for 2 minutes and 2 miles (slab triggers wet)?

It was a slab triggering a wet, but it was still moving after 5 minutes and looked to be longer than 2 miles. There was one around that time that looked like this one but headed down one of the ski areas.

[hucksquaw]

rerun. but very impressive

[bakers_dozen]

holy fuck, I'd shit my pants if I was trying to avoid it and suddenly EVERYTHING cracks and goes

didn't see it first it first time around good repost

[bio-smear]

Yeah, thanks for reposting and getting this to the top. That is insane, makes my sphincter quiver.

[G]

I was standing in the base area at Turoa skifield watching Chris and Adam thowing the bombs from the helicopter. watching it slide was the biggest and one of the most intense things I have ever witnessed.

Patrol had just finished the afternoon sweep. That bowl isn't in the boundary of turoa, but it can be skied to from the top of the lifts with only a minutes worth of traversing. The thing cut loose and slid down the skiers left side of Turoa, running on the other side of the ridge from the lodge.

F'ing cool stuff to see.

Somewhere out there, there is a video shot from another helicopter that was flying around. rumors are it was a news helicopter, but I have been looking for another tape and haven't found anything yet.

My original thread:

http://tetongravity.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4778

[skea 457]

I wan't really sure if that was the one that went down Turoa or not. There is also a video from a guy sitting on a chairlift watching the wet stuff slowly flow down the mountain below him. People were skiing along right next to the flow as it was going quite slowly slowly by that stage.

[G]

Yeah, the slide on the home video was one of three slides on wednesday. the first two were outside of the boundary, to the west of the lifts. Then there was the inbounds slide Wed afternoon, (see the picture below and the resulting sign above) and then the huge one on thursday PM, to the east side of the lifts. Thursdays big slide came after an entire day of warm, clear and sunny weather. (!)

Do you have a copy of that dude's home video?

[skea 457]

No, I only saw the chairlift footage on the evening news, I haven't seen it anywhere on the inernet.

[grskier]

Wow, thats a freekin' huge slide....

[zion zig zag]

This is funny, I was just telling MD9 and freshie247 about this vid yesterday.

[skea 457]

It seems this video was not the avalanche that went through the ski area:

This is NOT the one that went throught the ski area(in news report above), it is larger and in an area known as the Mangaehuehu glacier.

This area is out of the official resort area but is accessible from the lifts. Hence, there is generally no avalanche control carried out by the resort in this area (not allowed by DOC). However, it's very common for people to ride out there, it's very good on a powder day as a lot of people don't know about it, don't wanna go out there, or are put off by the short hike out at the bottom.



Orange shaded area is where the avalanche occurred.

Source: http://forum.ski.com.au/ultimate/ult...1;t=015872;p=2

[G]

It seems this video was not the avalanche that went through the ski area:

Yep, The big one in the video happened on Thursday. It went along the right side of the map below. The Crown wall is drawn in red, and the flanks are green. The red line here represents a distance of about 3100 feet across. My guess is the slide went of for about 5 kilometers. The X marks the cliff seen at 1:05 into the video.

The inbounds slide - the one reported in the news, with people skiing alongside - happened Wednesday, the day before this video was shot. that one is marked here in pink on the left. Two more class 4 releases also occurred that same day, running through the solitude area on the left side of the map.

Crazy stuff, eh?

[skea 457]

Here's a photo of the inbounds one: