Canada's second largest landslide | The Hope Slide | Home A Roam S03E06 (4K)

Today we are at the Hope Slide. It's just about 15 minutes up highway 3 outside of Hope. And it's hard to imagine what happened here 55 years ago but basically that entire mountain behind us just came crashing down into the valley all the way up the other side of the valley and then crashed and settled here. And it blocked off the highway for two weeks. We're going to tell you all about it and hang out here for the day. On January 9, 1965, with absolutely no warning, the south side of Johnson's Peak collapsed. A small avalanche had already blocked the highway where four vehicles were stopped. Unable to turn his transport truck around on the narrow road, Norman Stefanishen got out to try convincing the four others to walk with him the five kilometers back to Somalo Lodge in order to call the BC Department of Highways. Unable to convince them, Norman started walking east and was able to flag down a greyhound bus on its way to Vancouver. He told them about the highway closure and convinced the driver to turn around and take him to Somalo Lodge. Shortly after, the southwest face of Johnson's Ridge gave way, sending 47 million cubic meters of rock, ice and trees down the mountainside, wiping out everything in its two kilometer wide path. In turning back before the slide happened, Norman and the bus driver David Hughes are credited with saving an entire busload of people and preventing further tragedy. It's a sunny, beautiful Wednesday morning. We are on our way to check out the hopes slide. We've just actually had, I don't know, three or four days straight of rain, maybe like a week. It's just been so long that it's been a while since I've seen the sun. Anyways, say hello. And rumor has it there's an abandoned airplane crash in the hills there. So we're gonna go see if we can find that too. So we got all settled in and then we realized we were just not level enough. So pro tip, wherever you are, before you get all settled and put out your slide and everything, make sure that you're level. So we forgot to wipe off the side of the slide. Whoops. It's a good thing we just went a short distance and we can wipe it up before we have any problems. You may have noticed that the RV dinette has changed a little bit and we'll have some videos for you soon. We're testing out our new battery system. What really surprises me is that we've already used five percent of our capacity. Now that might be because we had to put out the slide, bring it back in again, and put it out again because we weren't level at first and because we've been running the heat constantly since we arrived. So it'll be interesting to see how much we use by the end of the day. Seven months after the landslide, a small plane crashed into the site killing the pilot. And eight months after that, a Royal Canadian Air Force Grumman CSR 110 Albatross also crashed at the Hope slide, killing five of its six crew. The Albatross is still out there and can be hiked to. So we are going to attempt a little bit of a hike in the snow to see if we can find an airplane that crashed here. Are we gonna make it? I have no idea. We'll see. Perfect time. The snow is deep. We definitely should have brought our snowshoes. I have it easy because I can just step in his foot marks so I'm not getting quite as snowy. Are you sure this is a good idea? Yep. Oh if only we brought these snowshoes. Sheesh. We'd be just floating on top right now. The snow's almost melted at home so wasn't quite realizing that 15 minutes down the road there would still be quite this much. You look a little stuck. Well I'm not stuck but I think we really could have used those snowshoes. That's like what we're gonna say this whole time. Should have brought those snowshoes. Well you can see that tree there. Oh yeah. So it's pretty deep here. I really don't like getting my feet cold and wet. I'm keeping going but it's deep. Yeah so I may just go back to the trailer and seek refuge. Maybe I'm being a bit of a wuss but I don't know. I'm just gonna hand you over to Jay and he'll take you hopefully to find an airplane. Hopefully you'll find it. Well I'm not that hopeful at this point but I'm at least gonna get up to that ridge over there and then see what I can see. I feel like that'll only take me like five minutes but we'll see. So I'm gonna have to turn back. The snow just gets too deep and yeah I'm exhausted just trying to go that short distance so I'm just taking a beeline back to the trailer. We're gonna have to try this another time. So to test out our electrical system I'm going to plug in both our laptops at the same time and then see on our little battery monitor how much it actually uses. So I'm going to turn on the inverter first. Seems to be good. Now I'll plug in the first one. Plug in the second one. So it's not using much power yet. Now I've got to fire up the computers and test it out. So what are we having for lunch? Okay so we, it's a bit cold out today so we are having Indian food again. The same ones that we had at our winter camping, winter boondocking at Manning Park. Today though we're trying the paneer butter masala and the dal makhani. And instead of naan we got some roti. Yeah just gonna cook those up. And then for dessert I've no idea if these are any good. We've never tried them before in the can but uh it's an Indian sweet called gulab jamun. They're kind of like, if you know what a Tim Hortons timbit is, it's kind of like a timbit soaked in like a sweet syrup. Anyway that is lunch. Benny's watching us make lunch. Oh they're done. Oh they're puffing. That's what they're supposed to do. I love it. I love that we're just like, let's go somewhere for the day and just like you know grab the trailer, park it, hang out. It's kind of fun. Yep when it's lunchtime. So what do you think? Spicy? That butter paneer masala, the package says mild but it's got some bite. It's good. So how does a mountain face just slip away like that? Initial investigations believed the triggers were two small earthquakes in the valley that morning. However it is now suggested that the earthquakes registered were actually a result of the slide itself crashing into the valley walls. A landslide typically happens when the natural slope on a hill is disturbed and becomes unable to hold the weight of the ground and structures on top of it. These disturbances can be heavy rains, drought, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, or even human activities. The hope slide was a bit of a mystery though because none of these circumstances were present at the time. It was winter, the mountain was covered in snow, and the natural landscape had not been disturbed. What is now known is that Johnson Peak lies over tectonic faults and shears. It is suspected that the movement of these faults coupled with weathering eventually made the deeper layers of rock unable to hold the load they were carrying. Archaeological evidence shows that Johnson Peak had experienced a landslide in prehistoric times too. I love that there's instructions on the top of this to tell you how to open it. Just saying. It's kind of funny. I can't pull it back. I am apparently not strong enough. Are you following the instructions? Yes, I am following the instructions. Oh wait, well the picture has like a thumb here so let's see. Oh! So first I make fun of the fact that there's instructions and then I can't actually open it. I'm gonna pour them into this and hopefully not make a mess. Oh my gosh, that's a lot of syrup. They look really funny. Wow, it's good. When you kind of pull up, it kind of looks like just a regular old rest stop. Nice big parking lot with a beautiful view of course, right? And then you kind of realize what exactly happened here and it's a little bit hard to picture and to imagine that we are standing 70 meters above where the ground level used to be, which is to me just like a little bit hard to picture that. Tragically, the four people who stayed behind in their cars were killed in the massive rock and debris that came down from the mountain that morning. Rescue workers were able to retrieve the bodies of 39-year-old Thomas Starchuk of Aldergrove and 27-year-old Bernie Lloyd Beck of Penticton, but Bernie's passengers, 23-year-old Dennis George Arlett and 21-year-old Mary Kalmicoff of Penticton were never found. And to realize that two people were never recovered, they're still buried under there somewhere, it's a little a little bit haunting. So by the end of the day we're at 83 percent. Yeah, we've used, you know, almost 20 percent of our battery just by running the heat all the time, having our laptops going, so it's good to have a nice idea of what our usage could look like. Well, the sun has gone down past the mountain and you can see we're in the shadows again and we're losing daylight. Looks like the clouds are coming back in again. Oh well, we had a great day of sun. And that's the end of our day trip here to the Hope Slide. We hope you enjoyed it and learned a little bit of something. And if you enjoyed this video we would really appreciate if you could give us a like and subscribe and hit that notification bell. Thank you very much, we really appreciate it. And in the meantime, keep on living the life you imagined. And we'll have some videos coming up on that soon.