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Tricia

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The US Geological Survey will be performing a study inside JHMR with will involve digging a trench 10 feet deep and 150 feet long along the Lower Faces.

This is a study to learn more about the Fault which created the Tetons.
This study should be done by the end of the month.

Does anyone know when the last earthquake happened there?
 

Bad Bob

I golf worse than I ski.
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Read there was a 5.? last week near Idaho Falls. Not that far away. Also been seeing about lot more minor activity around Yellowstone this Summer.
Could A be related to B?
 

Jerez

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Let's hope it's not the "big one." If Yellowstone really blew,N. Korea's nukes would seem puny.
 

SpikeDog

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The largest known earthquakes on the Teton fault in recent history occurred around 4800 and 8000 years ago. From Wikipedia......

The only big one nearby that I can recall is the Borah earthquake near Challis, Idaho in October 1983. A 6.9 quake, it was pretty powerful, and about 150 miles from JHMR. I was sleeping in my 6th floor dorm room at Univ. of Idaho about 240 miles northeast of the quake, and it shook me awake. It was only 8 AM, so not enough to make me get up, but I knew it was an earthquake once I saw my roommates weren't screwing with me. I thought they were shaking the bed.
 

Bob Peters

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The US Geological Survey will be performing a study inside JHMR with will involve digging a trench 10 feet deep and 150 feet long along the Lower Faces.

This is a study to learn more about the Fault which created the Tetons.
This study should be done by the end of the month.

Does anyone know when the last earthquake happened there?

Hi, Tricia.

Thanks for bringing this up. They did indeed dig a big trench on the Lower Faces inside the ski resort boundaries, about 400-500 vertical feet above the valley floor. They are studying the Teton Scarp, which is the visible evidence of the fault itself. I found this really cool description of the entire trench project:

https://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/topics/teton-paleo/

Lots of photos and information about what they were doing and what they were hoping to find.

While it's not outwardly visible at the ski resort, the Teton Scarp is visible in several spots further north in Grand Teton National Park, right where the gently-sloping valley floor starts to rise much more steeply into the Teton Mountains. The most visible part of the Scarp is on the hillside just above String Lake and below Rockchuck Peak. It's the slightly diagonal line moving slightly diagonally downward from the lower left center in this University of Utah photo to the lower right - interrupted by the gully with a little bit of remnant snow.

TetonFaultScarp_.gif

And coincidentally, here's a photo of Pepi Stiegler booting up toward Rochchuck Peak with the upper portion of the Scarp visible over the tops of his skis - with String Lake below. This was May of 2009:

1a - Pepi Kicking Steps up Rockchuck 5-16-09 016.jpg

And then me skiing right at the top of the Scarp about an hour later (photo by Pepi):

1 - Bob on Rockchuck3 - 20090516_78.jpg

It's a really curious coincidence that you brought up the Scarp, Tricia. I had just added that photo of me skiing on the Scarp as my Pugski avatar yesterday and then I saw your post this morning.

Cool.
 

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