[Gimpilator]

video link

[Bronco]

Woah! Close call!

[cascadeclimber]

Oh my god! Look at that erosion and horrible environmental damage! Fly the WTA and Washington DNR down there immediately to block that trail with fences and felled trees! (sorry, I couldn't resist) A climbing partner of mine went through there on his descent a day before this happened. My understanding is that it was this plus a lot more and that the approach has (or was) temporarily closed as a result.

[joker]

Yikes! And yeah, cc, why don't you head out to the lateral moraine where the "trail" cuts over onto the Blue Glacier on the route up Olympus with protest signs, as I'm sure one of your favorite orgs is headed right up there to re-route that sucker (NOT!). But this flagrant strawman gives some insight into your mindset I'm guessing... (and seriously, try hiking up that supposedly blocked-by-fence-and-felled-trees trail that has you so chapped this month - sounds like it's still very accessible!!)

[Slugman]

Isn't he the guy who started a "diatribe thread" about "self proclaimed cable line trail fixers", when that is exactly what he is? Sorry, couldn't resist.

[mbravenboer]

The sky seemed clear, do you know what caused it? Did a dam break or something?

[Chief Joseph]

Is the entire mountain that ugly?

[RichP]

[Gimpilator]

[Brushbuffalo]

There may have been a sudden non-weather related release of water from beneath a glacier. These events, called glacier outburst floods (or in Iceland, jökulhlaup), are quite common at Mt. Rainier (including a "smallish" one on August 14, 2015) from the Tahoma Glacier, another one from the Kautz Glacier in 2012 and at many other locations....Japan, Alaska, Iceland etc. as well as in the Andes. Some of the historic glacier outburst floods in Iceland have had truly stupendous volumes rivaling or even exceeding discharge volumes of the Amazon. Here's a video of one in Iceland in 2010. What about the debris, you wonder? That comes about due to released water entraining loose material in what is called "bulking up." This event, if a glacial outburst as I believe it is, was a small one. Note the dark, damp areas on both margins of the channel. Very recently there had been an even larger volume of material surging through. Note also that after the first surge the flow diminishes but just as suddenly peaks again. This pulsing is common and fascinating in its own right. These last hikers had, what, 5 seconds between life and certain death. They are fortunate that at least one was on high alert. The folks did the right thing. They got out of the channel ASAP. Always better to run upslope than to try to outrun such an event downvalley, even for Usain Bolt! Now.....will someone translate the Spanish captions? RichP?

[RichP]

[Brushbuffalo]

Thanks RichP. I figured out the white hat part but that was about it! So it seems that this commentary was what one would expect if was a TV network here. Actually maybe coverage here would be more sensational but it is indeed a pretty spectacular little vidclip.

[Kim Brown]

Must have been a natural dam that broke, right? Do any of you old farts remember the pulsing mudflows that hit about every 20 minutes several times down the Whitechuck at Kennedy Hot Springs in 1975? SAR had to help some folks out. I'll buy a beer for anyone who was there. Nature is tremendous; it's scary, frustrating and exciting to live somewhere that is still geologically trying to reach its angle of repose.

[Brushbuffalo]

Kim, although the mechanism of release is not always clear, in many documented glacier outburst floods, the water accumulated beneath the ice or within the ice mass(other times it occurs on top, which makes the release more predictable). Since liquid water is denser than ice and glaciers are shot full of crevasses and moulin (vertically melted shafts), water is able to flow down and sometimes accumulate if it doesn't have an easy way out. Intraglacial and subglacial accumulation is virtually impossible to monitor and predict when it might release, so the ultimate release can come alarmingly rapidly, as the Aconcagua video suggests. Even supraglacial ponding can be missed if no one is looking (duh)! I would be very interested in the details surrounding this event. I do recall the 1975 outburst flood(s) from Glacier Peak but I wasn't there as a witness (it was between my trips there...the Brushbuffalo photo was on Frostbite Ridge in 1978). So I don't get a beer from you. At least in that flood the old two story patrol cabin at Kennedy Hot Spring survived....unlike the rain-induced flood in October 2003 that wiped it out as well as the campground and the hot spring enclosure. Never did like that tepid colliform- filled cesspool anyway!

[puzzlr]

Holy Crap! Great that everyone made it safe. It seemed like this had happened before because the upper guide was glancing uphill frequently. And kudos to the camera operator. First of all, HORIZONTAL, thank goodness, then stuck to the action except for one short pan over to the people that escaped. So often the camera pans wildly all over and you can't see anything very well.