{"id":41138,"date":"2022-06-28T07:43:39","date_gmt":"2022-06-28T07:43:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=41138"},"modified":"2022-06-28T07:43:39","modified_gmt":"2022-06-28T07:43:39","slug":"west-salt-creek","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2022\/06\/28\/west-salt-creek\/","title":{"rendered":"Always fly with the window blinds up: the West Salt Creek landslide"},"content":{"rendered":"

Always fly with the window blinds up: the West Salt Creek landslide<\/h4>\n

Over the last couple of weeks I have been in the USA and Canada in a series of meetings.\u00a0 The trip involved a fair amount of flying – not the easiest thing to do at the moment, but that’s a different story.\u00a0 On one leg I flew from the East to the West coast in a day time flight.<\/p>\n

The USA is a stunningly beautiful country, so a long transcontinental flight is a treat.\u00a0 I am always slightly depressed that most people fly with the window blinds up – indeed on this flight the majority of the blinds were closed from boarding to landing.\u00a0 I was staring out the window when, by complete coincidence, I saw this:-<\/p>\n

\"The

The West Salt Creek landslide in Colorado.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

This is the failure that has become known as the West Salt Creek landslide<\/a>, which occurred in Colorado on 25 May 2014.\u00a0 I was able to get a better image of the landslide:-<\/p>\n

\"The

The West Salt Creek landslide in Colorado<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

The landslide has been described in detail in a report published by the Colorado Geological Survey (White et al.<\/em> 2015<\/a>).\u00a0 The slide is about 4.5 km in length, involving 29 million cubic metres of rock and debris.\u00a0 It is estimated that the landslide reached a peak velocity of 72 km\/h.\u00a0 Secondary failures increased the volume to about 55 million cubic metres.<\/p>\n

Sadly three men – Wes Hawkins, Clancy Nichols and Danny Nichols – were killed in the landslide.\u00a0 Their remains have not been recovered from the site.<\/p>\n

On the same trip I saw two other features of interest.\u00a0 First is this large tailings facility:-<\/p>\n

\"A

A tailings facility in the US.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

And second is this fascinating ancient landslide in the mountains:-<\/p>\n

\"An

An ancient landslide in the US.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

I’m sure that this ancient landslide has been studied properly – does anyone know the details?\u00a0 I would love to visit.<\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n

Reference<\/h4>\n

White, J.L., Morgan, M.L. and\u00a0 Berry, K.A. 2015.\u00a0The West Salt Creek Landslide: A Catastrophic Rockslide and Rock\/Debris Avalanche in Mesa County.<\/a>\u00a0Colorado Colorado Geological Survey, 45 pp.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Always fly with the window blinds up: images of the large 25 May 2014 West Salt Creek landslide in Colorado, USA <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":41141,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[469,30692,983,725,230,48],"class_list":["post-41138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-landslide-images","tag-featured","tag-flight","tag-landslide-images","tag-north-america","tag-tailings","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}