Massive Landslide near Yellowstone

This landslide is in Western Wyoming, in the Grand Canyon of the Snake River, between Jackson Hole and Alpine.
Located on Hwy 89/26 it is a main road for those traveling to Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks.
The slide began Saturday and is still sliding. Wyoming Department of Transportation estimates the ground is moving at the rate of 1 foot per minute.

The 2,000-foot slide began creeping onto the road between Hoback Junction and Alpine on Saturday morning and advanced far enough the Wyoming Department of Transportation closed the route later that day. Tons of earth, rock and trees piled onto 300 feet of the highway in a mound 40 feet high that oozed into the Snake River, blocking part of the waterway and forming a new wave. Tuesday evening, WYDOT district engineer John Eddins said a portion of the slide had slowed, but another portion was moving at a rate of 1 foot per minute. WYDOT officials estimate that about 35,000 to 40,000 cubic yards of material must be moved. That likely will take about 10 days, Eddins said.

The following video is a 47 second video of a 30 minute time lapse of the slide, posted by WYDOT on their Facebook page
Video







Article here from jh underground.

Article here from jh news and guide

landslides can be quite common in mountainous areas like that...I've been there many times and I live real close to yellowstone...they don't happen near the roads too often but they are quite common in the areas like this...if i'm not mistaken if you go to a gift shop and look at some of the safety booklets for yellowstone there is a landslide warning in there somewhere

I have never seen a landslide move that slow before. One foot per minute?

That seriously scares me.

can you post that video without me having to log into facebook as i dont use it

its cool that its been going since Saturday. 1ft a minute is different. i dont think ive herd of that before

Couldn't find a new one but did find this moment in history:

reply to post by Ahabstar


Sorry, but am I detecting a hint of sarcasm?

reply to post by jaycen420


Try this link for the video.

reply to post by Elostone

LOL at 20 seconds in, I was surprised to see the DOT worker walking around *on top of* the landslide as it's moving!! I know it's slow, but isn't that kind of frickin' dangerous??!!?

The whole thing could just accelerate and he'd be screwn!

Originally posted by Cryptonomicon
reply to post by Elostone

 

LOL at 20 seconds in, I was surprised to see the DOT worker walking around *on top of* the landslide as it's moving!! I know it's slow, but isn't that kind of frickin' dangerous??!!?

The whole thing could just accelerate and he'd be screwn!

Yeah thats what I was thinking. Hell it could have sucked him in somehow. Oh well thats a lot of dam dirt on the move. Luckily it went slow.

I've been around slides before...
I lived and worked on a horse farm, in the hills of South East Kentucky
Had one that moved about a foot a day...
for about 4 days
before It finally gave away and when it went... it was gone!

I've seen others that took longer to slide...

I can't watch a video... but I never heard of one sliding constantly like that...
usually they give a little here and there... until they go "BAM!"

But...
I don't imagine that is seismic related though...

Nice post OP!

reply to post by Sky watcher


Indeed! That Hwy is a very busy one as many folks go through the canyon every day to work in Jackson. There is also a lot of traffic from visitors going to Teton/Yellowstone.
It's a miracle no one was caught in the initial slide!

reply to post by EvolEric


It is not seismically related. It is caused by an abnormally wet spring, along with the heavy snow pack melting now.
That particular area is, however, the location of many 4 to 6 mag EQs...usually 1 to 3 such EQs per year. There have not been any recently though.

ETA This area does get a LOT of snow...Alpine averages approx. 500 inches per year!

reply to post by Elostone

I don't imagine that is seismic related though...

I know

I learned all about em, herding horses and cows out of the path of danger when i was 19

but thanks for trying to clear it up for me (i am being sincere)

We have been there many times.. have seen that spot.
One year wife and I were in Yellow Stone, the east entrance we heard just re-opened after a big slide so we went out that way and HOLLY MOSES !!! We could not believe it .,. Was like 2 miles of the hiway had been covered with slide rubble.., The mountain side on the north side of road was strait up , and left strait down maybe 8000 foot,.
If were any one on that road when that slide came across.. They aint here no more !
Amazed at what mother nature can do ..

*UPDATE*

Because of the volume of mud, rock and water moving across US 26-89 about 24 miles southwest of Jackson, and the speed at which the material is moving, there is no practical way to stop the slide and begin work to reopen the highway until the slide stabilizes naturally. No retaining structure could hold the slide back because of the amount of water involved, and any attempt to drill horizontally into the moving slide to drain water out would result in broken drainage pipe, WYDOT District Engineer John Eddins said Wednesday. “The slide is an earth or debris flow, which is soil and rock saturated with water. Containing this type of slide at the rate it is moving would not be safe or practical because it would flow around a structure or berm built for this purpose,” WYDOT Chief Engineering Geologist Jim Coffin said. “Capturing the water feeding into the slide would be also be very difficult because the water flows below and above ground and from different sources on the hillside.” The slide is moving at a rate of about one foot per minute with an estimated 40,000 cubic yards of material currently covering the highway to depths of up to 40 feet. WYDOT crews began moving material off the highway Saturday, but by 10 p.m. they could no longer keep the road open. Contractors were brought in to assist Sunday, but by Monday it became clear that effort was only further destabilizing the slide above the road.

Source

Seems this will not be resolved anytime soon. To make matters worse, the area is forecasted to get more precipitation.
On a positive note, I hear the bars in Alpine are offering specials on "mudslides"!





In spite of the geology, or perhaps because of it, I am fortunate...Truly a beautiful place

If that supervolcano blows up there goes half of Western America... lol, now that's going to suck

We have a landslide near here at Mam Tor in the Peak District, infact world renouned by studying Geologists for its practical location aswell as simplistic mechanisms enabling the field-researches to study the slide millimeter per year. Half a moorside is giving way above the valleys of Edale and Castleton. Living nearby its quite a treat to go up there and do some self-studying now and again.

UPDATE!!

WYDOT engineers have given the go-ahead for 24-hour, seven-day-a-week operations to remove the debris coming down from the active Double-Draw landslide which closed off the Snake River Canyon in northwestern Wyoming.

"The slide did things that are very encouraging for us yesterday," said John Eddins, District 3 district engineer. "Water flow in the middle of the slide has increased which has moved a lot of debris down to the road." The material in the lower moving section of the slide was last measured moving at a rate of about one foot per minute. Previously, that area was moving about six feet per hour. "You can't walk across the slide anymore because of how fast it's moving now," Eddins said. "It looks like a really slow moving river of mud. That's good news for us because the large mass is breaking up and coming down with the moving material."

Source
Seems the slide is beginning to become manageable enough to begin the clean up.
At the meeting WYDOT held in Alpine Saturday, WYDOT could not give exact amounts of soil that had slid onto the road, but this slide continued for more than a week. On the 3rd day, there was already 40,000 cubic yards of material covering the highway to depths of up to 40 feet.
Many of the area residents work in Jackson Hole, WY, which is 35 miles away, commute to work on this Highway.
Now they must detour through Teton Pass, making their commute over 70 miles each way.