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A rockfall shattered a snowy landscape and barely missed a hut full of tramper in New Zealand Monday ( Jan. 21 ) .
The steep west face of Mount Dixon at Aoraki Mount Cook National Park strike at about 2:15 p.m. local time , leaving a blue track of rock and ice across the park ’s Grand Plateau , theTimaru Herald reported .
A rockfall from Mount Dixon struck in Aoraki Mount Cook National Park in New Zealand on Monday (Jan. 21).
Spectacularpictures and picture of the aftermathfrom local channelize company Alpine Guides show a debris apron covering the glacier , with nose candy catch up in its lobes .
relatively modest evenfall
The rockfall was more than 1.5 naut mi ( 3 kilometers ) long and left detritus 500 to 650 foot ( 150 to 200 meters ) from Plateau Hut , where 12 mountaineers were camped . Plateau Hut is a stop for social climber scaling the park ’s peaks , some of which uprise more than 12,000 feet ( 3,650 m ) . The climber separate newsperson the slide sounded like a 747 K on takeoff .
A rockfall from Mount Dixon struck in Aoraki Mount Cook National Park in New Zealand on Monday (Jan. 21).
The field hut was temporarily close and 15 climbing iron on the mountain were flown out the next day as a care , the Timaru Herald noted . The hut was reopen after geologists and stave from the New Zealand Department of Conservation decided any further rockfalls would head away from the hut .
The home parkland ’s largest late rockfall was in 1991 , when the top of Mount Cook fell off . Thetallest mountainin New Zealand lost 32 feet ( 10 m ) of pinnacle when an estimated 423.8 million cubic invertebrate foot ( 12 million cubic meters ) of rock candy and ice fell more than 1.67 miles ( 2.7 kilometre ) down the easterly side of the mountain .
Arthur McBride , manager at Hermitage Alpine Guides , said the latest Dixon rockfall was modest compared with the Mount Cook slide . " If Mount Cook was a 10 , then this was a 3 or a 4 , " McBride told OurAmazingPlanet .
A rockfall in Aoraki Mount Cook National Park nearly hit a hiker’s hut on the Grand Plateau. The hut is the tiny brown rectangle in the lower right.
Why the mass flow down
Rockfalls and landslide are common in the Southern Alps , the tidy sum kitchen stove that include Aoraki / Mount Cook National Park . The rugged landscape is one of thefastest - rising hatful rangesin the world . In the past 5 million old age , tectonic forces have pushed up the Southern Alps by as much as 15 mi ( 25 kilometre ) .
The apex rebel so fast that landslides are the only way to bestow them down — river and glaciers ca n’t do the job tight enough , researchers have detect .
A closeup of the shattered face of Mount Dixon following a rockfall on Jan. 21, 2013.
The fast pace of corroding from landslides matches the mountain ’s uplift rate of 0.4 inches ( 9 millimeter ) per year , geologist Niels Hovius and fellow worker first observe in a work published in the journal Geology in 1997 . The research was confirmed in subsequent study .
Landslides can be triggeredby earthquakes , rain , snowmelt or a alteration in gradient . When grime and rock can no longer give together , they give way and slide downward . A landslip can move slowly or quickly , but either speed can have fateful force .
The Mount Dixon rockfall stopped near a glacier.
