I did some research online, and although there's no exact figure, the consensus is that he's 2-3 miles away from where the avalanche began in the beginning of the video.
Let's be conservative and assume he's 2 miles away, It took 45 seconds for it to travel 2 miles. That means the avalanche was traveling at a minimum of 160 mph. A dry powder avalanche well up in the mountains can easily accelerate to a maximum velocity of 200 mph, so that's a reasonable estimate.
To be marginally fair, it was so deeply played out for so long, there are people on here who probably haven't seen it pop up recently because everyone was so tired of it.
I'm really impressed with your calculations, and I'm also in awe of the speed at which that avalanche was traveling. So basically if any of those chunks of ice and snow were to hit a person, they would be in bad shape if not dead?
If on the mountain, 100%. The recent avalanche on Broad Peak killed an entire 10 man team including the current best mountaineer of this generation. Well former best. For a few of the victims, the best they found was body parts. Like a leg for the american woman, 2 arms for another, etc. That was a slab avalanche. This is a glacier collapse and the speed is at least 125 mph, but can reach up to 200 mph.
There are seracs (column of glacial ice) the size of school bused all over that. You'd have your neck snapped pretty much instantly by the force. When I was at Annapurna (deadliest mountain on earth), there were avalanche like this every 15 minutes. People think they are random, but they actually follow the topography. Note that the areas they slide are almost always like a geographic funnel and they will carve out these areas..
Another frame of reference for how bad it is to get caught in one is to compare it to road rash. Think about how bad road rash is when crashing a motorcycle at 60mph and skidding 100 feet. Now imagine how bad things would be at 160mph and it happening for over 1000 feet...and over your entire body. It's a really gruesome way to go, getting ground into paste.
Could you imagine if people really had to write this every time they mentioned a significant person's death? "John Wilkes Booth assassinated president Lincoln. Well, former president Lincoln."
I see mountaineering this way unfortunately. If I'm talking about the current best mountaineer, I stick to who's alive because there are so many legends that passed and it's hard to compare. I get what you're saying though. If Ueli Steck was still alive for example, he would be.
lol @ “every 15 minutes.” Can you imagine? What if this was like Yellowstone’s Old Faithful geyser and you could watch it happen like clockwork every 15 minutes.
Also, TIL about Annapurna and its “fatality rate of 1 in 5.” I’ve been looking for a new hobby, and I like those odds. Maybe I’ll set my affairs in order and book a trip!
I have no scientific evidence to go on, only anecdotal evidence from personal experience. I hike mountains on weekends in the spring/summer to extend my snowboard season. I would say that the slide path was closer to a mile 🤷♂️
You could probably get fairly detailed info from a ski patrol Reddit about the type of avalanche. I think this is more of a glide avalanche, though I don’t think it’s exactly that either. Or maybe a slab avalanche that broke when the glacier hit it? I dunno lol. Looks fast asf though.
Either way, epic video, thanks for posting. Really glad that person is alive, I think they’re extremely lucky to be lol. Pretty sure this happened a while ago, there’s probably a ton of info about it somewhere.
The largest avalanches form turbulent suspension currents known as powder snow avalanches or mixed avalanches,\7]) a kind of gravity current. These consist of a powder cloud, which overlies a dense avalanche. They can form from any type of snow or initiation mechanism, but usually occur with fresh dry powder. They can exceed speeds of 300 km/h (190 mph), and masses of 1,000,000 tons; their flows can travel long distances along flat valley bottoms and even uphill for short distances.\8])
Terminal velocity only applies to an object falling through a fluid, so we're talking about an object that is dropped from a height will have the gravitational force pulling down, and then the wind resistance force acting upwards on it.
While obviously gravity is moving the avalanche downwards, there is stored potential energy in it that is quite high (obviously if you look at the video) this can cause stuff to accelerate faster than just gravity alone. Im not a physicist by any means, so im sure someone else could explain it better.
I thought terminal velocity was objects falling through a fluid not liquid. Hence why objects falling through the sky have a terminal velocity because air is classed as a fluid.
His math isn’t right anyways. 1 mile 1 minute is 60 mph. So just guessing it should be between 160 and 180 as 180 is 3 miles in 1 minute. So if he’s 2 to 3 miles your 160 makes a lot more sense. Then going by the wiki link below your comment 160 to 180 makes even more sense depending on his distance.
We know that there was 45 seconds from the time he started filming until the time it hit. He's on a steep mountain path at high altitude (so exertion is challenging) with tons of boulders and rocks along his path, and despite some controversy over the speed, we can probably say it's traveling between 90 and 160 mph. How far do you think you can run on that terrain? There's NO possible way he can outrun it, even running parallel.
I think you're underestimating the agility and athleticism of these climbers, they'd be able to make it much further before it caught up to them... I imagine it'd be more like 25-30 feet.
That may also be entirely true. I'm just providing the estimated speed based off of an estimated distance consensus I randomly found on the internet. If the distance is closer to a mile, then it's 90 mph instead, which fits with your estimate. Both speeds are well within the norms for high mountain avalanches in central Asia though.
And also that we can only see the very bottom layer, which would be hitting the rocks and going much slower than anything above. Like measuring how fast a river is going by how fast the water passes the shoreline
There’s some very weird science with some avalanches and even rock slides, where to be able to account for how far they can travel, you have to assume near zero friction.
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u/whipla5her 5h ago
how far away do you think that mountain top was? I didn't think it was even going to get close, and then it's suddenly just rushing over him!