Mount Rainier’s Nisqually Cleaver has been the site of some spectacular, major rock avalanches recently. Three major rock falls and several smaller ones occurred in just the past week, reports the Seattle Times. The newspaper quotes Stefan Lofgren, lead climbing ranger for Mount Rainier National Park, saying:
From my standpoint of looking at the mountain for 20 years, we’ve probably had rockfalls like this once every five or 10 years.
Because the mountain is “wired” for earthquakes, an event like this is also captured on seismic instruments. The USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory can tell you the time of day of one rock fall:
On Friday, June 24, 2011, between about 1634 and 1640 UT (0934 to 0940 Pacific Daylight Time), seismometers on or near Mount Rainier recorded several signals with characteristics typical of rockfall or icefall.
Climbers on the mountain caught this view, as well. Click through to see close-up photos:
Inspired by this video majesty, our sometime Outdoor Correspondent John Hieger (@powercoward) puts down some thoughts:
Mt. Rainier deserves a full-blown concept album or at the very least a rocking ballad from somebody who knows how to use a distortion pedal.
Mt. Rainier is the baddest mountain in the lower 48, hands down. It’s Ray Lewis with lava veins and a volcano heart, rising 14,000-plus feet from sea level, unlike those mid-continental posers who haven’t felt a pair of glaciers since the last ice age. Rainier’s like Leroy Brown times a million which is why its so important we get the tribute song right. This isn’t the time for folksy wannabe Neil Youngsters–its crevasses and ice fields are teeming with the steel guitars and beards of many a musician who couldn’t satisfy Rainier’s appetite for a soundtrack worthy of its might. It’s made of rock, not alt-country–hell-lo.
Rainier hungers for a lahar-appropriate metal riff that can keep up with its fists of river and stony ice faces. Leave the Issaquah Alps to the Decembrists idolizers.
The Rockies deserved John Denver, The King of the Cascades doesn’t want us to make that mistake. It just wants its overdue respect; the grunge movement blew this epic song-writing opportunity (Rainier doesn’t listen to The Presidents) and it’s had enough. Check out these rock slides, exactly. You can’t tell me that’s not anger. Now edit in “Run to the Hills” by Iron Maiden and we’re getting a little warmer.
Unless the sleeping rockers of Seattle want to see Orting leveled by a volcanic haymaker I suggest they start looking up for inspiration, it’s not like you can miss it.
