The air-bearing concept is quite feasible. Slab snow avalanches can travel
on an air-bearing and have been clocked at around 200 miles per hour. I
think that was done in Canada. It's hard to outrun something like that. /
jim
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On
Behalf Of Garth Wood
Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2003 10:32 AM
To: olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [OM] OT today in history
At 11:58 AM 4/29/2003 -0300, John Hudson wrote:
This day 100 years ago in the Crowsnest Pass area of south west Alberta,
Canada.
"On April 29, 1903, at 4:10 am, 82 million tonnes (30 million cubic
metres) of limestone crashed from the summit of Turtle Mountain and buried a
portion of the sleeping town of Frank. The dimensions of the rock mass that
fell are 150 metres (500 feet) deep, 425 metres (1,400 feet) high and one
kilometre (3,280 feet) wide. The mechanism of movement that enabled the
rockslide-avalanche to spread over 3 square kilometres (1.2 square miles) of
the valley in less than 100 seconds has been the subject of considerable
discussion."
More can be read at
http://www.crowsnestpass.com/Tourism/historic/frankslide.html
Perhaps some members of the list have photographs of the area.
Unfortunately I do not even though I have driven through Frank on several
occasions.
Being an Albertan, I've driven through the Frank Slide area on a number of
occasions. It's quite eerie, and easily accessible via the Crowsnest Pass
highway (Interprovincial #3, which ultimately leads into B.C. wine country
[ 8^b ] and stunningly beautiful intermontane areas).
One theory for how the rockfall spread was that it was literally riding on
a cushion of compressed air which "lubricated" the slide (and also allowed
it to fan out with a quite discernible "edge" -- if you were standing 50
metres east or west of the edge-line as it fell, you would have been totally
unharmed, and your pants would have been thoroughly soiled... 8^> ).
Sadly, I have no photos of the Frank Slide, though I'm doing another
multi-day photo-op drive-through of southwestern Alberta this summer, so
mebbe later...
Garth
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