Forum Index > Trip Reports > Ross Lake Overflight with Don & Natala Goodman Part 2: Scary Fissure Above Gorge Lk. 03.25.18
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Hamilton Felix
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Hamilton Felix
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PostWed Mar 28, 2018 1:22 pm 
Thank you. I am trying to recall what year that big rock slide blocked the highway at Tunnel Two. I recall who was Supervisor at Gorge. He and his wife owned a store in Marblemount and they were not happy about a long highway closure during tourist season. I got up on the Gorge intake building when they made the shot. Using a motor drive on my 35mm SLR, I got pictures of the blast with a better view than the newsies set up on the left bank of the dam. That was before digital cameras and the rise of the internet. I hope to retire by the end of the year, hopefully to spend more time outdoors. These days we have a cool word, "bushcrafting," but when I was a kid we just called it "playing in the woods." biggrin.gif

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Brushbuffalo
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PostWed Mar 28, 2018 1:27 pm 
Hamilton Felix wrote:
hope to retire by the end of the year,
You will find, if you are like KarlK and me and many others, that you'll be so busy with productive work coupled with a healthy measure of leisure that you'll wonder what you did during your "career years!"

Passing rocks and trees like they were standing still
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KarlK
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PostWed Mar 28, 2018 1:32 pm 
Thanks Hamilton Felix. I'm suddenly reminded of that massive rockfall in March 2010 that took out part of the Ross Dam haul road and wiped out the boat docks along with some vehicles. Some info on that is at: https://washingtonlandscape.blogspot.com/2010/03/diablo-lake-roack-slide.html Earlier that year I'd been linking up the Diablo trail with the Ross lake west bank trail as part of my "training program"* for the Chuckanut 50K in March and had hiked / jogged through that section of haul road quite a number of times in February. It took a looonnggg time for NPS et al. to get that section of haul road reopened. I hiked through there this year on December 8 and 9 for the first time since 2010 as part of this year's CM50K "training"; some pictures of the stabilized situation are here: https://www.nwhikers.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8026207 * my wife insists I am untrainable, but that hopefully pertains to other stuff.

Karl J Kaiyala
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KarlK
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PostWed Mar 28, 2018 6:52 pm 
Hamilton Felix wrote:
BTW, Ross elevation seems to have turned around. It's above 1488.6 and headed up.
Hmmm...I just checked (6:42 pm) and the lake's at 1487.37 and trending downward at a rate largely unchanged since about March 15:
Trend
Trend
In other words, one of my fondest dreams may be realized this year, i.e., Ross lake hitting 1475' or thereabouts and me trooping uplake to take it all in and get photos.

Karl J Kaiyala
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Hamilton Felix
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PostThu Mar 29, 2018 11:06 am 
You are correct. I just called the Ross Op. Ordinarily I can cross monitor the other Skagit plants, but the elevation indicator that feeds our remote control computer system is haywire and showing 1607.99 (I'm sure you know full lake is 1602.5). We have others, though. Seems I jumped the gun, as did the co-worker who emailed a graph showing a turnaround. That only lasted a few hours. We're around 1486.87 at the moment, and hoping it will turn around soon.

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KarlK
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PostThu Mar 29, 2018 11:14 am 
Hamilton Felix wrote:
and hoping it will turn around soon.
OK, that does it, gonna head up there with the packraft and go get some more pictures while the lake is at its lowest. Thanks for the update!

Karl J Kaiyala
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RodF
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PostFri Mar 30, 2018 11:00 am 
This may be of interest: Landslides and displacement waves in Lake Crescent. "Newly acquired bathymetric data reveal that several large rockslides that surround Lake Crescent deposited debris into the lake. Previous research indicates that subaerial rockslides entering lakes can generate displacement (tsunami) waves and seiches that result in megaturbidite deposits. Radiocarbon analysis of the megaturbidites indicate that four rockslide-displacement waves occurred at 2,859 (2,785-2,943), 4,015 (3,921-4,088), 5,736 (5,656-5,889), and 7,097 (7,006-7,242) cal yr BP. The most recent event deposited ~7 x 10^6 m^3 of debris into the lake, which likely generated a displacement wave with an opposite-shore run up height of 86 ± 20 m. Offset of the megaturbidite layers visible in seismic reflection profiles where the Lake Creek-Boundary Creek fault traverses the northern lake basin shows that rupture along the fault and the deposition of megaturbidites are related. The mean inter-event recurrence interval for the four Lake Crescent megaturbidites is 1412 ± 234 years with the mean age of the most recent event 2,859 cal yr BP. As a result, based upon a lognormal probability distribution there is a 28% chance that an earthquake will occur along the Lake Crescent portion of the Lake Creek-Boundary Creek fault zone in the next 50 years. "This result highlights the regional seismic hazard to the north Olympic Peninsula posed by this fault." See pages 53-56 for discussion. - Joyner, Lacustrine Megaturbidites and Displacement Waves: The Holocene Earthquake History of the Lake Creek-Boundary Creek Fault at Lake Crescent, Washington, USA, thesis, NC State, 2016. Wegman et al., abstract, GSA 2017 Annual Meeting, Seattle

"of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt" - John Muir "the wild is not the opposite of cultivated. It is the opposite of the captivated” - Vandana Shiva
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Brushbuffalo
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PostFri Mar 30, 2018 12:09 pm 
That is very interesting, Rod. As in quite well- known, Lake Crescent was hit by a large prehistoric landslide originating from Storm King Mountain that divided the earlier larger lake into the present Lakes Crescent and Sutherland. Here is a video about a 2007 landslide that produced a sizable displacement wave (splash wave) in Chehalis Lake in the southern B.C. Coast Range. The computer simulation is pretty cool!
Just a reminder: To be clear, don't misunderstand. Neither I nor anyone else I am familiar with is predicting this sort of thing anytime soon into Gorge Lake, Diablo Lake, Ross Lake, or lakes with shoreline homes and roads and hilly surrounding terrain such as Lakes Whatcom, Samish, Sammamish, or Washington . However, having stated that, tsunami-genic earth movements into any of these bodies of water are practically certain over the long term of millenia. Acceptable risk? To me, yes, even if I did live on one of those shorelines.

Passing rocks and trees like they were standing still
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KarlK
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PostFri Mar 30, 2018 1:34 pm 
Eric -- oh yeah, I watched that. Surpassingly cheesy, but kinda fun when paired with some Dr. Walker's Amber Restorative.

Karl J Kaiyala
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evergreenhiker
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PostSun Apr 08, 2018 3:10 pm 
yep! Just the movie I was thinking of. It did spur me into researching going to Norway for hiking at some point in the next few years.

The alpine world is my church.
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Hamilton Felix
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PostSun Apr 08, 2018 5:18 pm 
Just an FYI update: Ross Lake is showing 1481.40 at the moment. Despite a little recent precip, we're not yet seeing the fill we're looking for. BTW for cheesy past movies there's always High Ice, filmed near Darrington, WA in 1977 IIRC. Supposedly that resulted in a number of fake boulders (rockslide scene) in Darrington, but I've never found any.

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FUN CH
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PostSun Apr 08, 2018 7:51 pm 
Brushbuffalo wrote:
Probabilistic prediction is the rule. Regarding risk assessment, an event with very low probability can be an acceptable risk even if it has high consequence. Problem is that both probability and consequence can be difficult to quantify, and individuals and societies have different levels of what is considered acceptable.
this is something that I'm trying to learn more about. If a certain event risk is said to be a low probability occurance, if you can't quantify that risk event with a number, how can we say it is low probability? Hope I stated that question correctly.

'' what did you dream, it's alright we told we told you what to dream....so welcome to the machine'' David Gilmor (pink floyd)
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Brushbuffalo
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PostSun Apr 08, 2018 8:10 pm 
Freeski wrote:
If a certain event risk is said to be a low probability occurance, if you can't quantify that risk event with a number, how can we say it is low probability?
Excellent question! When determining risk, probability of an event and / or consequences of it occurring can sometimes be ( often might be more common) difficult to quantify. If both factors are believed to be mere guesstimates, then risk is a wild guess. How are we to respond to wild guesses? Remember also that both individuals and societies have wide variation in what is considered acceptable risk. That is a huge separate topic.

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Mike Collins
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PostFri Apr 13, 2018 2:58 pm 
Hamilton Felix wrote:
It is good to be cautious. We have never had total confidence in the cliff above the left bank of Gorge Dam
One of the greatest natural disasters of modern Europe occured when a massive landslide created a wave of ~800 ft that swept over the Vajont Dam in northern Italy. The towns beneath the dam were devastated by the onslaught of debris killing ~2,000 people in four minutes time. It is ironic that the solid construction of the now abandoned dam left it largely intact. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajont_Dam

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puzzlr
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puzzlr
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PostSat Apr 14, 2018 3:53 pm 
Wow, Mike. That wikipedia article has some impressive photos.

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Forum Index > Trip Reports > Ross Lake Overflight with Don & Natala Goodman Part 2: Scary Fissure Above Gorge Lk. 03.25.18
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