Sign up to receive this in your email
(No more than once daily, often less depending on the amount of new news.)

2025 Archive Index - All Editions

America’s deadliest avalanche near Stevens Pass in 1910

March 1st marks the date of the nation’s deadliest avalanche in American history that occurred 115 years ago near Stevens Pass, back in 1910. In the days leading up to that fateful and tragic day, a lot of snow fell in the region. On one day alone in late February, 11 feet of snow fell. Then the weather turned warmer with rain, adding more weight to all that fresh snow on the slopes.

Along the Great Northern Rail Line, snowplows could not keep up with all that heavy snowfall. Two trains, both bound to Seattle from Spokane, were trapped just beyond the west portal of Stevens Pass rail tunnel at the depot town of Wellington. Early in the morning of March 1st, a thunderstorm unleashed a massive avalanche from the side of Windy Mountain, sending a wall of snow, a half a mile long and a quarter mile wide, down the slopes. The avalanche plowed through the depot and swept the two trains 150 feet down the hill into the Tye River valley. Ninety-six people were killed. Twenty-three survived.
Source ... (mynorthwest)

Dozens found alive in containers, 8 died: India avalanche

The latest on a massive avalanche reported in the last News Update

Dozens of construction workers have been pulled out alive from metal containers after they were buried by an avalanche in the Himalayas in India's Uttarakhand state. They survived - some as long as nearly two days - as the containers in which they were living had enough oxygen to sustain them until rescuers could dig them out, Indian media reported quoting officials.

On Friday, 54 workers were buried when the avalanche hit a construction camp near Mana village. Eight were killed, while the other 46 were rescued. The operation lasted almost 60 hours in sub-zero temperatures and concluded on Sunday. Most of the labourers, who were working on a highway expansion project, were able to "withstand the wrecking avalanche" because of the containers, rescuers told The Indian Express newspaper.
More ... (BBC)

Quantifying, and modeling a glide avalanche in Glacier Park, USA

This is a USGS announcement and summary of a paper published in full in Cold Regions Science and Technology. The full paper is not included at this link.

Glide avalanches present a significant and repetitive challenge to many operational forecasting programs, and they are likely to become more frequent. While the spatial location of glide release areas is extremely consistent, the onset of glide avalanche release is notoriously difficult to forecast, and their destructive potential can be immense. Thus, the timing and dynamics of glide avalanches is an important area of study. To better understand these processes, and to improve assessments of risk to transportation corridors and infrastructure, event documentation is key. Here, we survey a large glide avalanche event along the Going-to-the-Sun Road in Glacier National Park, Montana, USA, during road opening operations in the spring of 2022.
More ... (USGS)

Recovery of 3 heli-skiers in avalanche near Girdwood on hold

Efforts to recover the three men who died in an avalanche Tuesday while they were on a guided heli-ski trip in the Chugach Mountains near Girdwood were halted due to dangerous conditions and difficult terrain — and may not resume until conditions improve, Alaska State Troopers said Friday. The incident occurred around 3:30 p.m. Tuesday near the West Fork of Twentymile River. The slide area is a mountain cirque about 9 miles northeast of Girdwood, in backcountry terrain accessible by air.

The three men caught in the avalanche were identified as 39-year-old David Linder, of Florida; 39-year-old Charles Eppard, of Montana; and 38-year-old Jeremy Leif, of Minnesota. Friends said the three met years ago in Minnesota and had been friends since high school. They, and another person skiing with them that day, were clients of Chugach Powder Guides, a longtime Alaska heli-ski operator.
More ... (Anchorage Daily News)
(The story is also archived in the avalanche-center.org incidents section)