Highlands Ridge avalanche near Aspen

[Sibhusky]

^^^
I guess it's kind of like all the stuff that gets built on so-called "100-year flood plains". You're taking the risk that it's infrequent enough that it won't affect you.

That's why when I was looking at property here I wouldn't touch a thing in the valley. Anyone with any sense can tell it's a flood plain, it's got several rivers running through it and it's surrounded by mountains. Where else is all that snow going to go? I'm on a foothill. I've already had water pouring in the basement when I lived in New Jersey.

 

[coskigirl]

Some great drone video of the damage from this avalanche now that snow is melting.

 

[dbostedo]

^^^
That's just wild to see. Still hard to imagine just a lot of snow doing that. It also shows the avalanche wall for the house well... it would be fascinating if someone had similar footage from before the slide.

 

[Jwrags]

It appears the wall did its job. What an amazing amount of destruction.

 

[James]

Historic snowslides threaten summer forest activity
Apr 29, 2019
By Dennis Webb
The Daily Sentinel

"The Forest Service issued a closure order at the trail head parking area, which right now is estimated to be beneath 30 or 40 feet of compacted snow and avalanche debris. The access road also was buried. Katy Nelson, wilderness and trails specialist for the Aspen-Sopris Ranger District, said the road is narrow, there is no place to park."
...

"I've never seen an avalanche cycle like this in my career," said Brian Lazar, who is deputy director of the Colorado Avalanche Information Center and has been doing avalanche-related work for nearly 25 years.

'We saw numerous size 4 avalanches this year,' he said.

He said during the one March slide cycle, the state had more size 4 slides in about 12 days than it typically would experience in about five years.

He said size 5 slides, the largest known to man, typically are restricted to the world's biggest mountain ranges, with more vertical relief than Colorado's mountains. Such slides are big enough to do damage like taking out an entire small village, he said.

Lazar said one or two of Colorado's slides this year arguably could be classified as size 5. One of those is the Conundrum slide, which was rated at 4.5, he said."

https://www.gjsentinel.com/news/wes...cle_0cdcffb6-6a3d-11e9-83bc-20677ce85d90.html

 

[Seldomski]

So what happens to all those felled trees? Are they removed? Who pays for the removal? Looks like a lot of fuel for a fire.

 

[pchewn]

Looks very much like the trees that were knocked over when Mt St Helen's erupted on May 18 1980. But the trees are smaller and less dense. The felled trees on Mt St Helens were salvaged. The individual lumber companies paid for the salvage operations and sold the trees for pulp, lumber, or plywood.

 

[James]

Colorado doesn't have enough mills and lumber infrastructure. Mountains are steep, it's difficult. This has been an issue with beetle kill.
Maybe they should start a tv show to pay for it.
---------------------------
Colorado’s quest to tackle dangerously unhealthy forests

Dead standing trees a problem without a solution
By Jacy Marmaduke The Coloradoan
Sunday, April 1, 2018 8:08 PM
...
“You can’t remove dead tree material at this scale,” said Seth Davis, an assistant professor of forest and rangeland stewardship at Colorado State University, referring to trees killed by the spruce beetle. “It gets to be such a significant event that there’s really no way for management agencies to deal with this material.”

But forest workers and landowners say they have to: In a state where overcrowded forests exacerbate wildfire risk and threaten devastation to key watersheds, dead standing trees are everybody’s problem.

“There is a way out of this,” Colorado State Forester Mike Lester said. “But it’s not going to be easy, and it’s not cheap.”
---------------------
https://the-journal.com/articles/91122#slide=0