HOW'D THAT HAPPEN??

Ok all you would-be volcanologists and snow scientists, care to venture a guess as to the cause of this slide?



I saw this slide last Sunday while climbing on the west edge of the Paradise Glacier between about 7000 to 8000 ft, looking about level or slightly down ENE across to the WSW facing east side of the Cowlitz moraine in the general area where Amar and crew climbed up enroute to Little Tahoma recently.









My first thought was a blown out glide crack but it just didn’t look steep enough to blow out like that… I mean I know that slope angles can be deceiving from a distance, but still it just didn’t look more that about 25 degrees at that spot. And my guess the walls were at least 4 to 6 ft high.

Seems like it would take a lot of explosives to clean that hole out like that, eh? :

Any theories?

Dave Thomas and I skied the paradise glacier on June 15. the slide was not there on that date .
We have a interest in the area because we have skied it so we are alway slooking that way for current access . It also doesn't show up in any of my pictures. Amar and friends visited that Area and climbed  Little Tahoma with a report dated June 22. in his report there is a picture of of the area and no slide at that point. Those days of extra hot weather came after those dates I believe. Extra lubrication ?

Interesting, thanks for posting, Ron.  I don't recall ever seeing dirt and rocks confined so strikingly to the base of avy debris.  Possibly because it traveled such a short distance?  It does suggest it was well lubricated. 

These isolated slides on moderate slopes make me wonder if very localized hydrothermal vents might be involved.  Wish I could afford the color infrared aerial photography; large scale images suggest spots of anomalous heat flow on some lower slopes of Rainier.

Bizarre, the dark surface of the crown is kind of striking. Perhaps that absorbed more heat than the rest of the surface

We saw that slide Friday, July 5th, from our perch on Paradise Glacier and were really puzzled by it, too! It looked so weird. Thanks for posting! Great pics.

I think Silas wore that area out with too many laps! But I'd guess some kind of thermal vent in that area. Isn't there a face on Alpental that has some heating happen on a rock face, so it slides easy?