Colo's most dangerous slide path?

[Obi-Jong Kenobi]

the real question is: why would you be in a slidepath?

[Hacksaw]

any slide path can be dangerous. best to stay out of them.

I'll keep that in mind.......

[jwolter7]

Without a doubt it would be paths that have a lot of people under them. This would be roads built through tough mountains areas, not runs that skiers ski. Red Mt. pass in Co is at the top of the list in the USA. All you have to do is go there in a hot spring, after a cold Colorado snow year and you will see slides like you have only seen in books. Huge paths that bury the road in twenty feet of debris of snow mixed with broken trees trunks. Then, go to the library in Ouray and go downstairs to the research area and you will find research on the pass done by.....? the guy who did avy clinics in Jackson Hole for years, sorry I forgot his name, he did his masters work on Red Mt. pass trying to help the guys who keep the road open. The slide paths are named and mapped. I went there once when I was waiting for the snowpack to get better, after spending three days reading his research I went back home to Vail and put my skis back in the closet for the summer and took out my hiking boots and got a tan in the Colorado sunshine.
In Canada, Glacier Park has the most " NO STOPPING NEXT ___ MILES, AVALANCHE TERRAIN" signs I have ever seen. You can check State Highway Departments to see where they spend the most money on control work, thats where they see the problems. See if you can find any info from CO on East Vail chutes control work done on/around Feb. 14 1997, they boomed East Vail chutes on that day and caused a huge slid that buried I 70 so deep it took days for the back-loaders to clean it up. East Vail Chutes have killed many skiers. I think one of the worst areas for skiers is Berthod Pass in CO, access is too easy and it looks like the trees would provide safety, but it does not.

[jwolter7]

You ski slide paths because in CO the trees are too tight to ski anywhere else in midwinter, and if the snow pack is reasonable they are great runs with great snow quality. They are long, and flow down the fall line right to the valley floor. When safe they can't be beat, you just need to know what the conditions are which requires some re-con work before you ski them( you stay in the tight trees the first run). Also when you ski slide paths you don't ski right down the middle of the run, you ski right along the side of them changing sides when needed to keep out of the direct fall line of an avalanche. Big slides happen when conditions are ripe for that geographic area( learn the areas history and normal conditions), and they go where the rules of physics take them. you can avoid them if your carful.

[murph]

In the World? There are have been megadisasters in the Russia/Nepal/Pakistan that wiped out entire towns killing hundreds!

Don't forget Peru. 47,000 killed in this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970_Ancash_earthquake
There were other big ones down there too. I remember reading about one where a huge slide blocked and dammed a river, and when the dam finally broke the town below was flooded and tons of people died.

[jwolter7]

Don't forget East Vail Chutes....????
Another one, (Land of the lost), tweeners 1/4/08

[KillingCokes]

Wasn't Masontown(Frisco) destroyed by an avalanche back in the day. Not sure if anyone died or if it was still oppupied. At least that's what somebody told me when I lived up there

http://www.summithistorical.org/Masontown.html
Nevermind, but it could have been.