Anatomy of an Avalanche | Mount Hood Meadows Ski Resort
In the early evening of Sunday, January 17, a hard slab avalanche approximately ¾ of a mile wide near the top of the Wy’East face at the 10,650 foot level on Mt. Hood fractured and slid. The “crown” or fracture line ranged in depth from approximately four to ten feet and the incident triggered slides into three different watersheds – White River Canyon (between Meadows and Timberline), Newton Canyon (to the North of our permit area) and most significantly Clark Canyon, just inside our permit area.
The avalanche continued down the Clark Canyon drainage depositing itself in the foothills area about 200 yards shy of the Heather Chair Lift. In total it traveled 2.75 miles, collecting several thousand tons of snow, ice and debris before exhausting itself. The pile of ice, snow, rubble and debris in the deposition zone ranging in height from 15 to 30 feet.
Click-thru for the rest of the photos. This is my backyard, I spend a lot of time up there both inside the boundaries and wandering outside of them. Pretty amazing.
