The White Death Page #2

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Even very small avalanches can kill,

and the big ones are true monsters.

They can attain speeds of

over 200 miles per hour...

traveling a mile or more

on level ground.

No place in avalanche country

is entirely safe.

In 1988

the Austrian town of St. Anton

which had not experienced

an avalanche in over 60 years,

was struck just after dawn.

Houses which had stood for

almost 400 years

were destroyed in an instant.

Remote areas in less developed

countries are the hardest hit.

The greatest known avalanche

disaster took place in Peru

where an ice slide

decimated the town of Yungay,

killing 18,000 people.

They're awesome terrible things.

They'll rip you to shreds.

They'll Maytag you.

But they're also

beautiful to watch,

they're delicate,

they're graceful, they dance.

They're a double edged sword

in that sense.

They're not to be trusted.

Something we need to

learn something about.

In the western world most

avalanche victims place themselves

in the path of danger,

and see the mountains as

a playground beautiful and benign.

The interesting thing about

avalanche accidents is that

most of them

happen on nice blue sky days.

It's also very interesting to me

that roughly 95% of the people

who are caught in avalanches

are the ones

who triggered the avalanche.

And really the question isn't really

why is so and so getting caught,

it's why did they let themselves

get caught,

because there's so much knowledge

available today that nobody,

nobody needs to get caught

in an avalanche by accident.

The trap is set over

a period of time.

One snow flake is light

as a feather.

But the stealthy accumulation

of trillions can

form massive layers weighing

millions of pounds.

What triggers slides can only

be discovered

by digging into the snow pack.

Doug Fesler introduces

a group of students

to the deadly archeology

of a slab avalanche.

What kind of force

is it gonna take to rip it out?

That's all I really need to know.

First of all do I have a slab?

I'll start feeling here and

I feel resistance as I pull down.

It goes fairly hard to begin

with now it's starting to go going

a little easier.

A little more resistance again.

Right here a little bit easier.

Right through here is a crust layer.

Now it's very easy right in there.

Another shear plane possibly.

This is a nasty shear plane.

Look how this stuff just falls out

of here.

Shear planes allow colossal

avalanches to be set off

by the slightest disturbance.

We're corroborating the opinion

we have about the hardness

and weakness of

these various layers.

This stuff is so weak it...

just falls out.

Intermediate faceted snow.

The sugar snow.

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