1910 Wellington Avalanche · 1. Dense snowfall of more than six inches on slopes around forty...
Transcript of 1910 Wellington Avalanche · 1. Dense snowfall of more than six inches on slopes around forty...
1910 Wellington Avalanche
The wreckage at Wellington (McKay 2011)
For the past several years, some friends and I have been making an annual snowshoeing
trip during spring break. Last year, we waited until the last minute to reserve our beds at a cabin,
which meant our choices were limited, especially for a weekend during spring break. It came
2
down to either the Peter Estin Hut, known for its bountiful opportunities of backcountry skiing,
or any of the huts in the Alfred A. Braun Memorial Hut System, which came with the warning
that the trails were not only unmaintained, but were also known to cross avalanche terrain. Not
knowing much at all about avalanche safety, the Braun huts were out. This meant that even
though we are not backcountry skiers, we really only had one choice: the Peter Estin Hut.
The couple of weeks before our trip seemed a little warm with no snowfall, and we were
a little disappointed because the previous year was about the same, and we ended up having to
strap our snowshoes to our packs and hike up the trail for the first half. The Peter Estin trail was
a little higher in elevation, however, so when we arrived at the trailhead there was plenty of snow
on the ground, and it was forecasted to snow all weekend.
When we arrived at the hut that evening, there was also a group of guys there for the
weekend that came up for the fantastic backcountry skiing. In front of the cabin, they dug out a
snow cave on the slope where they planned to ski, and they were pretty confident that the snow
was consistent throughout. There were no weak layers, which meant it should be safe to ski with
no concerns, except for the fact that it had snowed about 3 or 4 inches that day and there was no
sign of it letting up any time soon. The next morning they showed us their beacons and we
played a sort of hide and seek game, where we each received a beacon and searched the house
for each other. They said they always wear their beacons even when they are pretty sure there is
no avalanche danger, but since it would be snowing all day, they were worried that the new snow
could slide off the snow base. If it was deep enough, that could mean trouble. They had a couple
other items to double check the avalanche danger, including a small snow crystal card that
helped them determine the size and shape of the snow crystals. Other than the hours of
preparation, backcountry skiing sounded extremely fun and my friends and I contemplated
upgrading to skies in the future instead of our snowshoes. This meant we would need to really
understand and be aware of the dangers of avalanches, and as “avalanche fatalities have been on
the increase in the last 20 years due to the rising number of climbers, skiers, snowboarders, and
snowmobilers in the backcountry,” it is not just my friends and I that need to be educated
(UCAR 2010).
3
Figure 1 Fatalities in the US have been on the rise (UCAR 2010)
The guys at the Peter Estin Hut were pretty sure that the snow had a stable consistency
throughout, but were worried about the new snow that was falling. This could produce the ideal
conditions for a type of avalanche called a loose snow or powder snow avalanche, which is
“loose snow that originates at a single point on a slope and gathers cohesion-less snow on the
surface of the pack as it descends” (UCAR 2010). At top speeds, a loose snow avalanche can be
quite dangerous, reaching a speed and strength capable of knocking someone down and burying
him. There is another, more destructive type of avalanche called a slab avalanche, which “occurs
when a cohesive layer of snow slides down a slope” (UCAR 2010). Most injuries and fatalities
occur with slab avalanches.
A slab is a denser layer of snow resting on top of a weaker layer. A weak layer forms
during long periods of no snow and very cold temperatures. A slab avalanche will most likely
occur when the weak layer of snow is resting on a sliding surface, which forms when the top
layer of snow melts or rain falls on the surface and the snow refreezes during the cold period
with no new snow. If it snows on top of the weak layer, the dense layers often develop when
heavy winds “fracture the new snowflakes in the air . . . and break them into smaller pieces and
deposit them on the leeward slope as a dense, cohesive layer of snow” (UCAR 2010). The dense
layer does not adhere to the weak layer, and when it becomes too heavy or something triggers
4
movement at a weak point, the whole slab will slide off the weaker layer, usually on slopes
between thirty to fifty degrees. When the dense sliding layer is very wet, the avalanche can reach
“destructive speeds comparable to the force of a tidal wave” (Moynier 2006).
The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research lists several scenarios that make
an area at a higher risk for avalanches:
1. Dense snowfall of more than six inches on slopes around forty degrees
2. More than twelve inches of new snowfall on top of a weak snowpack
3. More than six inches of new snow and high winds from the same direction for more than
six hours
4. Rain on top of snow (the heavier the rain, the larger the avalanche)
5. Warm temperatures and high density snow following cold temperatures with low density
snow
6. Warming temperatures during the day increasing the settlement of snow
7. More than 24 hours of above freezing temperatures (this deepens the slab)
8. A cold, calm day followed by significant snowfall, which increases instability of the pack
(UCAR 2010)
Because none of the conditions above existed during our weekend at the Peter Estin Hut,
the backcountry skiing was relatively safe. Unfortunately, almost all of the above criteria were
met during the snowstorm in the Cascades near Wellington, WA in the winter of 1910. These
conditions caused the most deadly avalanche in American history.
The final report in the Monthly Weather Review records the official cause of the
Wellington avalanche as “Heavy snowfall, followed by rain,” with the character of country as
“burned over with numerous dead snags,” where “two Great Northern Railway trains were swept
from track, with crushing power due to weight rather than velocity.” Although this area of the
Cascades regularly sees avalanches throughout the winter, this report documents how the
weather in the year of 1910, between February 21st and March 3rd, caused possibly thousands of
avalanches, not only in the paths where they occur every year, but also in places where they had
never occurred before. This series of avalanches was detrimental; “if we include the losses due to
stoppage in traffic as well as the cost of repairs, the total will be nearly three-quarters of a
million dollars, besides the loss of over 100 lives.” The report goes on to explain that it was not
only the large amount of snow that fell, but also the way the snow fell that caused the
5
avalanches. It started in January, with rather heavy snowfalls followed by a short period of
warmer temperatures above freezing that were present all the way up to the tops of the 7,000 ft
peaks. “Some slides occurred at this time but there was nothing unusual about them and they
attracted little attention.” After a couple days of this warm weather, it became much colder, and
the top layer of snow developed an ice crust on most of the high mountain slopes. This was
followed by another round of heavy snowfall early in February, “but on account of the prevailing
cold weather its consistency was light, being either fleecy or granular.” The wind blew the light
snow into deep drifts in the canyons, on the overhung crags, and on the ridges at the summits. A
low pressure area came in off the Wellington coast on February 23rd, which brought with it
“milder weather, high winds, and a heavy fall of snow in the mountains.” This caused another
round of numerous avalanches, but there were always snow slides in these places every year and
this was typical with this pattern of weather. This storm had barely moved through “when
another low pressure area made its appearance on the north Pacific coast, and it was quickly
followed by a third disturbance.” Each of these three storms followed the same track, and it took
them nearly a week total to move through. High winds and heavy rains accompanied the last two
storms, extending well up the slopes of the mountains. At the peaks of the mountains, the
precipitation was snow, but it was very moist and heavy. “As a result of these two storms, all the
recent falls of snow became soaked with moisture, while underneath was a layer of old snow
having less moisture, and beneath this was the first snow which had almost the consistency of
ice.” During the night of March 1st, these ideal conditions caused the slide that swept two trains,
three locomotives, four electric motors, the depot, a water tank, and over a hundred people off
the ledge and into the canyon 150 feet below (Beals 1910).
The events that led up to how these trains and people ended up in such a precarious
situation are documented through journals, memoirs, and historical records in the book The
White Cascade by Gary Krist. Krist explains that it all began with trying to keep the trains on
schedule during the beginning of this winter storm in February, 1910. The two trains involved,
the Seattle Express passenger train and the Fast Mail train were both very important, time
sensitive trains. The superintendent of the Great Northern Railway Cascade Division, James
O’Neill, kept very busy with the Fast Mail train, in particular, because they had an agreement
with the United States Post Office Department to move the mail from New York to the West
Coast in three days, with penalties for late arrivals. The Fast Mail had only started running the
6
previous September, with the first couple months hitting its target schedule perfectly. However,
the past few months had seen bad weather, and “by January the mudslides had turned into
snowslides, coming down with such frequency that a wrecker train sent up into the mountains to
clear up a slide-damaged freight had itself been demolished by a slide” (Krist 2007). Now, by
the night of February 22nd, the Fast Mail had missed its deadline at least four times. Already
running late, passing over the Cascades in the current snowy conditions would probably put it
even further behind schedule.
The other train, the first-class passenger Seattle Express train, was about as time sensitive
as the Fast Mail, and was also headed toward O’Neill’s division in the Cascades. O’Neill had one
rotary railcar (see Figure 2) available in that area to clear the tracks. The Seattle Express was a
couple of hours ahead of the Fast Mail, so
O’Neill was faced with the decision of
whether to hold the Seattle Express with the
rotary and wait for the Fast Mail, or go
ahead and send the Seattle Express and the
rotary up to Stevens Pass and hope the Fast
Mail caught up soon enough that the tracks
were still clear. He did have one more
choice – reroute the trains to the tracks
further south out of the hazardous weather –
but this would mean setting both trains even
more behind schedule. O’Neill had dealt with winter storms for many years now, and “to reroute
the trains now, because of something as normal as a late winter snowstorm, would be to admit
defeat even before the battle was truly under way” (Krist 2007). When the Seattle Express
arrived at Leavenworth, the Great Northern division point where locomotives were readied for
the steep trek up to Stevens Pass, the winds had not yet picked up, so Superintendent O’Neill
decided to waste no time and instructed the Seattle Express passenger train and rotary X802 to
proceed up to the pass and hoped the Fast Mail could catch up quickly.
When the passengers of the Seattle Express awoke on the next morning, Wednesday,
February 23rd, they were surprised when they noticed their train was not moving. The Fast Mail
train had caught up, but both trains were stalled at the east portal of the two and a half mile
Figure 2 A rotary snow plow was used to clear the tracks (McKay 2011)
7
Cascade Tunnel under the summit of Stevens Pass.
This was not a planned stop, and since there was no
dining car on the Seattle Express for this section of the
pass, the dining arrangements were made to feed the
passengers at the “beanery” cook shack where the
engine crews ate. At breakfast, the passengers
overheard the crewmen talking about the delay.
Apparently, west of the tunnel, one of the rotary
plows, “those magnificent specimens of twentieth-
century snow-removal technology, had gotten stuck in the very snowdrifts it was supposed to be
clearing” (Krist 2007).
The Seattle Express and the Fast Mail would have to wait until the rotary had cleared the
mainline before they could proceed through the tunnel. Unfortunately, as soon as the stranded
rotary cleared its way through the slide that it was first trapped in, it ran into another slide
another mile down the line near Windy Point, a particular stretch of track that “even the officials
of the Great Northern itself regarded ‘the weakest link in our transportation train’” (Krist 2007).
Until O’Neill could get this section of track cleared, he had trains delayed at all points
throughout the line, and the Fast Mail and the Seattle Express train could not go forward, nor
could they backtrack without running into other stalled locomotives. They would have to sit tight
where they were until the line was clear, but with the snow lasting over 24 hours so far, O’Neill
could reasonable expect this storm to pass sometime soon.
While the trains were stranded at the east side of the tunnel, the Seattle Express had to
pull forward into the tunnel to make room for the Fast Mail to pull up enough to reach the water
tank. It lasted only about thirty minutes, but it was a decidedly disagreeable experience for all
passengers and railroaders, with one engineer calling it “the dirtiest, blackest hole that a man
ever went into” (Krist 2007). Although the tunnel was a great improvement over the previous
route over the pass, which was a series of switchbacks up 3.5-4% grades, it had drawbacks of its
own. Besides being dark and dirty, the steam locomotives produced too much smoke, gas, and
heat causing serious ventilation problems. The passengers were getting restless, and incidents
like this only agitated them further.
Figure 3 The entrance to Cascade Tunnel (Sky Valley Chronicle 2010)
8
Figure 5 Schematic Plan of Wellington (Krist 2007)
Finally, by late Wednesday night into Thursday morning, the rotary plows on the west
side of the tunnel had plowed between Windy Point and the small town of Scenic, just a couple
of miles further down the line, and then re-plowed back up again to the Cascade Tunnel. O’Neill
could finally get the word out to the Seattle Express and Fast Mail that they could continue west.
However, it had snowed so much on Wednesday that before they could get moving they had to
dig themselves out. It would not be until Thursday evening that the two trains would emerge
from the west side of the tunnel into the town of Wellington. Unfortunately for them, there was a
new slide near the snow shed (See Figure 4) at Windy Point, and the rotary plows were again
stuck in this section of the
pass. Because the rotary
plows had not cleared the
path, the trains were now
stalled on the west side of
the pass in the small town of
Wellington on the side of
Windy Mountain. The
residents of Wellington were mainly railroad workers and their families, and the structures other
than the shacks the residents lived in were mainly railroad maintenance buildings, a hotel where
the train passengers could eat, and a tavern. The trains were parked on the passing tracks cut out
of the mountainside (See Figure 5), “perched on a narrow shelf, with a steep ravine below and
acres of heavy wet snow
above” (Krist 2007). The
wind picked up that
night, sweeping snow
into deep drifts above the
trains onto the slope
above. This unpleasant
wind continued through
the next morning, so most
passengers were comfortable in their warm accommodations or just waking up when they heard
the news of the first fatalities.
Figure 4 Snow sheds were built as protection in areas prone to avalanches (Sky Valley Chronicle 2010)
9
Very early in the morning of Friday, February 25th, 1910 just hours after the trains had
arrived on the west side of the tunnel, there had been a powerful avalanche at the Cascade
Tunnel Station on the east side. It smashed into the beanery there, killing the cook and his waiter
instantly. Until now, the passengers had only been concerned about the delays in arriving at their
destination, but hearing of the deaths at the very place they had eaten breakfast just the day
before, the passengers began wondering about their own safety as they examined their dangerous
situation. The wooded hill above their train was hardly dense enough to anchor the snowpack, as
“wildfires in the area had been allowed to rage unchecked for years, leaving the woodlands
around Wellington little more than a forest of charred stumps tangled in huckleberry brush and
cedar seedlings” (Krist 2007).
When the news of this avalanche reached O’Neill, he was not surprised. The temperature
had risen above 30 degrees on Thursday, and he knew heavy snow, wind, and rising
temperatures often led to sliding. However, he was certain that the Fast Mail and the Seattle
Express were safest where they were. The passengers inquired if they could move into the snow
shed down the path, but this would move them off the passing lanes and onto the mainline. If a
rotary plow need to come through, they would be blocking the way. Not only that, but there was
a reason a snow shed was built here; it was known avalanche terrain and Wellington was not.
They argued that the east side of the tunnel where the beanery was hit was not supposed to be
avalanche terrain either, and even though the passengers had encountered such a horrible
experience in the tunnel for only a short time period a few days before, they were thinking
maybe backtracking a short distance to park in the tunnel would be safer. However, they would
not be able to burn coal to keep the trains warm inside the tunnel because of ventilation issues, so
they were told that this was not an option, either.
On Saturday, February 26th, rotaries plowing both east and west of the tunnel were
breaking through drifts and slides, in an effort to somehow get these trains off the mountain, but
it was slow progress. The rotaries were running out of coal, and there was no clear route for
anyone to bring up more. Overnight, a third avalanche had come down near the recently cleared
area of track near the snow shed at Windy Point. In addition to all this, back at Wellington, the
Great Northern manual laborers were feeling underpaid and underappreciated as they continued
in vain to chip away at the snow on the tracks (See Figure 6). At 15 cents an hour, many had
decided the snow was too high and the work was too hard to even negotiate for more pay. They
10
began to leave in groups of two or three, willing
to make the trek west to Scenic, just four miles
away by foot. This would be risky because snow
was sliding across the tracks along the path, and
the shortcut into town was a thousand foot steep
descent. As the passengers watched them leave,
some men considered doing the same thing, but
as the temperature continued to warm, the snow
was melting and the footsteps were filling with
cold water. No one on board the train had come
prepared with shoes for this kind of hike, and
very few wanted to cross the avalanche prone terrain. Some men didn’t want to leave their wives
and children, and there were several older and incapable men as well.
By the morning of Sunday, February 27th, the rotaries near Windy Point and the two
trains stranded at Wellington were down to only enough coal to keep the engines running and the
passengers warm. It had warmed up enough throughout the day that the snow was turning to rain,
and O’Neill, realizing that he had been defeated by this storm, was considering any other
possibilities he might have to get the stranded passengers and railroad workers off the mountain.
The tracks to the town of Scenic were a long, winding eight miles, which he was not certain all
the passengers could handle on foot. The four mile shortcut ending in a steep descent that the
manual laborers had slid down the day before seemed too steep to consider. O’Neill and two
other railroad workers, who had been working on the rotaries near Windy Point, decided to use
this shortcut to retreat down to Scenic to figure out what to do. Unfortunately, before they
arrived another avalanche was triggered, sweeping one of the workers away while O’Neill could
only watch in horror, realizing “whatever options he had left for getting those people off the
mountain, bringing them down on foot – at least until the rain stopped and the snowpack had
stabilized – was not going to be one of them” (Krist 2007).
Without knowing what was ahead of them, five passengers from the Seattle Express also
decided to try to walk to Scenic that day. As they continued forward along the tracks in the
heavy, wet snow, another avalanche was triggered behind them. If at any point they wanted to
turn around, they now had no choice. After several hard hours, they finally arrived in Scenic.
Figure 6 Great Northern laborers clearing the snow from the tracks (Mapes 2010)
11
They found O’Neill had also made it, and a relief train had arrived from the coast that morning
with a crew preparing to bring supplies to the stranded passengers in Wellington. Everyone was
surprised to find that O’Neill’s workman that had been carried down the mountain by the
avalanche had also made it to Scenic. By latching onto a tree trunk as snow and debris were
carried down all around him, he had managed to survive with only some bruises and a dislocated
knee.
On Monday morning, February 28th, after hearing news that the path down was quite
treacherous, not many passengers or railroad crew in Wellington were too eager to make the
journey. The passengers that left the day before, “hiking in their street clothes through deep drifts
and sliding hundreds of feet down the mountainside on their rumps had made it safely out, but it
was a desperation move that the children aboard the train could not possibly attempt, and that
many other men and women aboard also thought better of” (Mapes 2010). The night had been
long and restless, with the rumbling of avalanches in the distance. “After six days of heavy
precipitation, the surrounding mountains had simply reached the limit of their capacity to hold
any more, and whole snowfields were now losing their grip on the slopes and plummeting into
the canyons below” (Krist 2007). The passengers didn’t want to hike through these conditions,
but at this point staying would be just as dangerous. Late the night before, the telegraph wires
had gone down, and to leave now meant heading out into unknown conditions in another round
of heavy snow. The relief train with extra supplies was much needed, and the rain on Sunday
evening had melted enough snow to make the path more visible, so another group of workers and
passengers set out into the relentless snow to get help. One man noted in his journal that the trek
was not nearly as bad as he thought it would be until they got to the steep descent, where once
they landed at the bottom, they had to run “as fast as we could down the road, to avoid the
boulders and gigantic snowballs that followed us” (Krist 2007).
Sometime that afternoon, the last of the working rotaries that had been unsuccessfully
working through the slides on the track the past few days ran out of water and the crew resorted
to shoveling snow into the tank to cool the motor. Eventually, the dirt and debris in the snow
clogged the tank and there were no more rotaries able to work on this stretch of track. O’Neill
was devastated. In his entire railroad career, he had never seen a storm as relentless as this one.
Although it snowed several more feet that day, a couple of men decided to head back up to the
trains from Scenic to help organize getting another group down on Monday. When they made it
12
back to Wellington, they helped many more passengers prepare themselves for the promise of
escape the next morning.
These passengers would not escape. Late Monday night, into the early morning hours of
Tuesday, March 1st, the rumbling of more avalanches continued. The slopes all around them
were layers of unstable snow and ice, now topped with dense, wind-packed new snow. The
northwestern winds carried in a thunderstorm from the coast, which was an unheard of
phenomenon in the mountains in the winter. Perhaps it was lightning; some insist it was the clap
of thunder; but whatever it was, “at 1:42 A.M. something caused a break in the surface integrity
of the snowfield on the side of Windy Mountain, and a buried weak layer somewhere in the
snowpack possibly collapsed with an enormous whump, sending a horizontal fracture shooting
across the face of the slope about a thousand feet above the trains” (Krist 2007). The entire slab
began sliding down the mountainside, sweeping with it the heavy, wet snow, boulders, rocks,
and trees. The slab picked up the two trains and carried them, with all the passengers and
workmen inside, down into the ravine. “When the coaches reached the steep declivity they were
rolled nearly 1,000 feet and buried under 40 feet of snow" (Sky River Chronicle 2010).
There were more than a hundred people on the trains that night, but there were only
twenty three survivors. Ninety six men, women, and children did not make it out alive. It took
through July before they found all the bodies. Most were killed instantly by the force of the
crash, but many more froze to death
or were buried too deep to dig out,
and suffocated.
The next several years were
spent trying to decide if this tragedy
could have been prevented.
Ultimately, it was decided that
“avalanche science was barely in its
infancy in 1910, and as the
Washington State Supreme Court
noted, avalanche predictions at that
time were ‘clearly beyond the
knowledge of men’” (Krist 2007). A Figure 7 Blanket covered bodies (Sky Valley Chronicle 2010)
13
snowstorm that lasted this long was unusual; it was within reason for O’Neill to assume the
storm would pass. These two trains were not the only trains stranded during this storm, and as
the conditions grew worse, the Great Northern Railway was doing everything they could to get
the trains back on schedule.
However, something would have to be done in the Cascades before another incident
occurred. It took the Great Northern Railway more than three weeks to repair the tracks at
Wellington, and there were many more areas of tracks, including Wellington, where more snow
sheds would be needed. Edward Beals quotes a local postmaster as saying, “It is very likely a
form of snow shed could be devised which would protect the track of a railroad from ordinary
slides, but it is hardly possible to provide for so many avalanches as were noted this year,
especially when such a large proportion of them came down in places where slides were never
before known to have occurred” (Beals 1910). He also notes that unless they plant new trees
from the top of the slope to the bottom, more avalanches may start occurring in these same areas,
and it probably will not take as much snow in the future to trigger a new slide. In the meantime,
Wellington changed its name to Tye, hoping that it was not forever associated with the avalanche
disaster. Finally in 1925, the Great Northern Railroad began construction on a new, longer
tunnel, which completely bypassed this disastrous section of tracks. Eventually, with no railway
coming through, Tye emptied out and became obsolete.
Knowing the incredible destruction an avalanche is capable of, I would like to think that
if I decide to go backcountry skiing, I will be as responsible and as knowledgeable as the guys
we met at the Peter Estin Hut. The morning we left the hut, a new group had arrived to enjoy the
skiing. They had no beacons and even though they realized that more than a foot of new snow
from the past weekend could lead to an avalanche, their only plan was to stick closer to the trees.
I am sure that plenty of people enjoy more extreme sports all the time without knowing exactly
what they are getting themselves into, and most of the time they get lucky, but the number of
avalanche fatalities will continue to rise as more and more inexperienced people venture out into
avalanche territory. There was a reason all the Alfred A. Braun huts still had availability that
weekend during spring break last year; at least most inexperienced people stay out of the known
recurring avalanche areas. However, we have to consider that even areas with no previous
history of avalanches are still a real danger when the conditions are right, especially with the
changing terrain of our mountains due to forest fires and beetle kill. “Despite the popular notion
14
that avalanches ‘strike without warning,’ these deadly winter phenomena, which kill an average
of 25 people in the United States each year, rarely occur unaccompanied by telltale signs that the
risk for such disasters is high” (Potter 2009). We must take the proper precautions and use better
judgment, so there will never again be a situation where more than a hundred lives are put in the
dangerous path of an avalanche like they were during the storm of 1910 in Wellington.
15
References Beals, E. A., 1910: Avalanches in the Cascades and Northern Rocky Mountains during winter of 1900–10. Monthly Weather Review, 38, (June 1910): 951–967. Available from http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/1520-0493(1910)38<951:AITCAN>2.0.CO;2 Krist, G., 2007: The White Cascade: The Great Northern Railway Disaster and America's Deadliest Avalanche. New York: Henry Holt and Co. Print. Mapes, L. V., 2010: 1910 Stevens Pass avalanche still deadliest in U.S. history. Local News. The Seattle Times. Available from http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2011211746_wellington28m.html McKay, J. J., 2011: The Wellington avalanche, 1910." Archy. Available from http://johnmckay.blogspot.com/2011/02/wellington-avalanche-1910.html Moynier, J., 2006: Avalanche Aware: The Essential Guide to Avalanche Safety. 2nd ed. Guilford, CT: Falcon. Print. Potter, S., 2009: March 1, 1910: The Wellington avalanche." Weatherwise 62, no. 2 (March 2009): 12. MasterFILE Premier, EBSCOhost Sky Valley Chronicle, 2010: The great Wellington train disaster in the Sky Valley 100 Years Ago. Available from http://www.skyvalleychronicle.com/SKY-VALLEY-101/THE-GREAT-WELLINGTON-TRAIN-DISASTER-IN-THE-SKY-VALLEY-br-100-Years-Ago-313790 University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), 2010: Avalanche Weather Forecasting [Internet]. Available from http://www.meted.ucar.edu/afwa/avalanche/index.htm