30 tonne rockfall closes Chief trail!!!

[Lurch]

There was a huge rockfall on the Backside trail on Monday night. It just narrowly missed 4 people!

The trail is closed for scaling and blasting till at least the weekend.

Here is the link.
http://www.clubtread.com/sforum/topic.a ... C_ID=50689

I was up there today doing an assessment with BC Parks- here's another shot of the biggest piece of rock that fell- and landed directly on the trail. Based on measurements, I estimate this piece alone weighs about 20 tonnes! All told, about 25-30 tonnes of rock came down. The other piece mentioned in an earlier post is at the bottom of the staircase visible at lower left.

There is no obvious reason why the rock mass fell when it did- it was raining on Saturday, but not unusually so, and this area would not have had any unusual runoff. There are also some tree roots visible where the toe of the rock mass once was- maybe these provided some pressure.

The trail is still closed- we removed most of the loose rock today, and a professional scaling crew is coming in tomorrow (Wednesday) to clear the rest. They then need to drill and blast the boulder sitting on the stairs- this may happen on Thursday.

Anyway, the hope is to get the trail re-opened by the weekend.

[natsdad]

Hi Folks:

This is from yesterday's Squamish Chief Newspaper:

Stawamus Chief hiking trail re-opens
Popular pathway deemed safe after rock slide, repairs

Chief staff
The main hiking trail to the backside of the Stawamus Chief has re-opened after a closure necessitated by a significant rock fall on the trail earlier this week.
The trail, which was closed by a rock fall that occurred late Monday (June 18), damaging one of the staircases about 200 metres from the trailhead, re-opened Thursday (June 21), a B.C. Parks official said.
No one was hurt in the incident, which occurred a couple of minutes after four hikers had passed the spot, according to the hiking website www.clubtread.com. The situation prompted a visit by a geotechnical engineer and a team of rock scalers, who were brought in to bring down any loose rocks that remained on the slope from which the slab — estimated by one observer at between 15 and 20 tonnes — fell.
One of the two chunks of rock that lay on the ground after the incident was the size of a small car, John Tisdale, B.C. Parks area supervisor, told The Chief.

cheers,
Steve