This video shows a visit to a snow wall along the Tateyama Curobe Alpine Route in Japan, which is 18 metres high now and has been up to 20 metres high in the past
Has anybody ever seen this in person?
Are there any snow walls as high as this in the European Alps?
I wonder how it‘s built and why it doesn‘t collaps?
You have to turn subtitles on, there is no talking.
Footage of the wall starts at around 4 minutes in
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Nowhere in the Alps really gets enough snow in a season to achieve that depth of compacted snow. I have seen snow piled up as high as a coach windows after a very snowy spell in the Arlberg before. This pic shows some extreme conditions in Bonneval sur Arc one winter when avalanches brought snow down across the road and it looked like this when they managed to dig through it...
I guess with Japan Alps it gets built gradually over the course of a season with heavy snowfalls cleared from the road and the depth of snow accumulating on the sides. I'm not a physicist, but I would say the reason for it not collapsing is that it consolidates as hard as concrete due to freezing as it gets laid down and the weight of what is on top keeps it there. The Japan Alps get some of the deepest snowfalls in the world, due to cold winds from Siberia picking up moisture from the relatively warm Sea of Japan and dumping it on the mountains there.
This is the view of Japan snow walls from above...
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
I was chatting to a Japanese woman once when skiing in Austria and she was telling me how in her home where she was brought up on the south Island the house had a door on the ground floor and the first floor and the first floor door was used in winter as the snow became so deep.
Seen and driven some of the other roads like this, some of the passes in Nigatta were sketchy as in a blizzard with 5m+ walls on one side and 10m + on the other.
See the reminants of one of the high routes in late September!
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
My son spent a Winter in Niseko. Some of the pics and videos he sent us of the insane amount of snow were great.
In one video there was a snow plough/blower clearing the road by sucking the snow up and blowing it into an 8 wheeler lorry driving along beside it. There were 2 more 8 wheelers following close behind to move into position when the first one was full and drove off to dump the snow in the local river bed. He took the video from their house window.
On Christmas day he video called us and showed us round where they were staying, and the view out of the ground floor windows. 2 days later he sent a pic of the same view, but there wasn't one, all you could see was snow because it was higher than the window. they regularly had to dig themselves out of the front door.
I think it can get that deep some years on Ben Nevis and perhaps on braeriach according to Ian Cameron’s book the Vanishing ice. I’ve seen snow on Cross Fell over 40 feet deep and it would have been much deeper in 1947 but that is not of course a level fall
Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
karin wrote:
In one video there was a snow plough/blower clearing the road by sucking the snow up and blowing it into an 8 wheeler lorry driving along beside it. There were 2 more 8 wheelers following close behind to move into position when the first one was full and drove off to dump the snow in the local river bed.
Yup, they did that in Moscow in the late 90s. Tip it all in the river.
After all it is free
After all it is free
The snow on the only open pass down into Arabba on the "snowmageddon" year was a lot higher than a car. Didn't feel super-safe. Sometimes there were convoys and sometimes it was closed, presumably based on the avalanche risk. Or whether the guy in charge wanted his tea.
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Snow walls in the Lebanon , an unlikely place , are expected to last till September this year after the huge snowfalls this winter , they got all the snow that bypassed the alps . Obviously there are no pictures yet as they haven’t started cutting the track but expect some pretty deep cuts .
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