Huge Rockfall On Mt Rainier

If you live in an area once covered with ice, you may have seen one of those huge boulders sitting out in the middle of a field and wondered how it got there. You were probably told that it was a glacial erratic from hundreds of miles away, dropped there thousands of years ago by a retreating glacier.

But how did that huge boulder get into the glacier to begin with?

This short video will answer that question.



“On June 24, 2011, a massive rockfall ripped from the top of Mount Rainier’s Nisqually Cleaver, dropping house-sized rocks and thousands of tons of ice onto the Nisqually Glacier below,” explains this YouTube text. “The rockfalls continued for two weeks, affecting skiing and climbing routes. For a full account of the damage, check out the October issue of Backcountry Magazine.”