Huge avalanche/rockfall on Rainier?

Edit: nevermind I just read that the time lapse was over 2 months.  I originally thought that the glacier was moving really fast...

Can someone post a link to the sliding cars time lapse if it still exists? I never saw it.

Original thread here.

ParadiseSlidingCars.mp4

Thanks for your time Lowell. I knew right away that the recent events were way larger than the Gibraltar collapse. Thought it would be cool to compare the two.

I've got a similar program running capturing all the webcams around the park, and in reviewing the tapes so to speak it looks like there was a pretty good slide at 1830 Saturday evening. If not then it's just a cloud that looks a lot like a slide. Wish the park service would give us more than 1 frame every 5 minutes to work with for making time lapses

So yesterday (July 1) I skied up to Camp Muir.  Having a degree in glaciology made me a bit more interested in this event than the average bear, so I traveled up the western edge of the Muir Snowfield.  For starters, I can't recommend this uphill route enough!  I was shocked to find myself completely alone with zero tracks or boot prints on the ground.  I started on the west by sliding down about 30' at Pebble Creek into a smooth bowl (no wind hummocks to deal with) and continued along the west edge from there.

Anyways, this route afforded me the best possible view of the slide.  It was active all day once things heated up, with one notable event kicking up a small cloud.  Hearing the concussions of what must have been car-sized boulders occasionally dropping off the cliff was a treat.  Here are some pics.

Unfortunately my camera is just a crappy point & shoot.  Really makes me wish I had a micro 4/3 camera.  Here's my amateur assessment of the situation after studying it for a while (I defer to NPS and USGS geological assessments, of course):

I don't think this thing will be stable for a while.  Now that the main edifice of andasite lava flows has disintegrated I believe the poorly lithofied cleaver will continue to disintegrate until the highest point lays back to a "gentler" angle of repose.  Due to the exposure of the face the upper exposed face at the top of the cleaver is now very steep, more so than it was before the collapse; you can also see in the pictures that the oversteepened section has a lot of "granularity", as well as the right side of the two thin lava beds (which may have been responsible for the initial large collapse of the bulkhead that used to sit on top of them.  This granularity generally indicated a broken up edifice (read: less stable)  It is entirely possible that it will continue eroding back until it is under the upper Nisqually ice cap.   More likely though it just continue falling apart until it hits some slightly harder, deeper part of that lava flow.

Nisqually Icefall Direct Ski: congrats to the 3 (?) parties that bagged that this year; that club will be exclusive for a while.  The snow slope exit remains mostly intact, but the ledge to access the exit ramp has been deeply gouged by the debris.  As this elevation is securely in the accumulation zone, the debris will likely get buried next winter and not be an issue.  However I'm betting that it will take a couple of years of ice accumulation to build back up the ramp and remove the steep gouges into something resembling a skiable slope.  Also, I could see next winter's snowfall onto the face itself affecting a lot of renewed rockfall action next spring, so even if the lava formations stop collapsing immediately, it could be Spring 2013 before the route is even remotely stable from a rockfall danger point of view.

Anyways, that's my take on it.  Again, I really wish I'd had a camera that could better show you all what I saw for myself.  Oh, and I skied out via the Nisqually Chute, which is totally safe from this landslide BTW.  In fact, there are many great steepish options in the Nisqually Chute region, because it is so fat and filled in right now.

Jonn-E,

Very informative post. Enjoyed your perspective and will find it very interesting to follow this over the next couple of years.