More on the rock slide

 

The Squamish highway is more hazardous than I thought, and it's
right in my own back yard. Looking at this picture from
the Geological Survey of Canada...

http://cgc.rncan.gc.ca/landslides/photo_library_details_e.php?IDp&p=1

...say you're riding from left to right. You pass one rock face and
think you're safe. But just ahead, way up the mountain where it's hard
to see from a bike there's another unstable formation just waiting
to rumble.

NOTE: this road is often packed with cars, especially on a busy weekend,
and traffic sometimes crawls along at 20 mph. It's even worse lately
with construction for the 2010 Olympics. So even if you get a few
seconds warning as pebbles start falling there'd be no way to
accelerate outta there the way the bus did in last week's slide;
it was around 11:30 at night with no other traffic around.

Shee-it.

The GSC has another site on avalanche prediction models. Can anyone
translate this bafflegab into plain English?

http://cgc.rncan.gc.ca/sda/landslide_e.php

Sean_Q_

 

wrote:


Basically, if you can't afford to send a geologist out into the field to
specifically analyze every part of the countryside, then you should
instead come up with a best estimate for how likely a landslide is.

So if we don't send a geologist out to do a detailed field survey, how
do you analyze the landslide danger? You look at things like slope,
composition, and how much stuff there is to cause a landslide, and come
up with a mathematical formula that predicts the likelihood. Then yo use
the numbers to make pretty maps. Having done all that, you go back and
check your work by comparing with actual landslides.

--
Timberwoof <me at timberwoof dot com>
faq:  http://www.timberwoof.com/motorcycle/faq.shtml
Ten Steps to Fascism: http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2064157,00.html

 



And if you're Caltrans,  at the end of the exercise, after many years
of
study, you conclude that maybe it wasn't such a good idea to run the
Pacific Coast Highway across a place called "Devil's Slide".

Lots of science goes into those conclusions doncha know.

 

Further to my last:


I should have said "road construction". Sometimes I've sat there for as
long as 1/2 an hour for blasting or other road work.

In addition, there are often traffic accidents on this highway which can
block it for hours at a time.

SQ

 


<snip>


And I don't mean just me...likely *no one* could!

--
Tom in Bristol - Boxcars!




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