Posted: 06/29/2014 12:01:00 AM MDT
COLLBRAN - From the rickety, old picnic table in Melvin 'Slug' Hawkins' front yard, the landslide that roared onto his family's ranch and buried his son and two other men a month ago looks like a giant scab on the nearby lush green hills.
He can point a finger and trace its path from where a huge slab of rock and soggy earth first broke off the top of the Grand Mesa and began a slow slip down a draw.
His finger then points to where the geological anomaly turned into an 85-mph freakish force of nature later that stormy Sunday night. It was carrying 32 million cubic yards of debris with so much force that 'it just slurped over a ridge,' shot back in the opposite direction and circled down into a depression and then into the valley 'like water swirling in a bowl.'
In the past four weeks, geologists, hydrologists and other experts have come to sit at this picnic table with the 72-year-old Hawkins and hear his description, along with his lifetime observations of the site of a once-in-eons landslide.
That kind of human assessment, experts say, is as important to the study of the May 25 slide as all the high-tech imaging, modeling and monitoring that has been going on around the clock - and is expected to continue for a long time with experts from around the country.
'What locals saw is really important,' said acting state geologist Karen Berry of the Colorado Geological Survey. 'Sometimes we get better information with the knowledge of these longtime stewards of the land.'
The Hawkinses' stewardship goes back to the 1860s, when ancestors settled in the Plateau Valley near a ranch that now covers 960 acres. Half of the 2.8-mile-long slide is on their land. The other half is on U.S. Forest Service ground where the Hawkinses have long run cattle, hunted and recreated, particularly on a high shale shelf that was a landmark for their ranch before the slide scoured it away.
Their hunting camp was there. It was where they posed for family portraits. It was a place for scattering the ashes of family members.
Now, the only landmarks on the scar include two cameras, two Global Positioning System devices, a stream gauge, two rain gauges and a pressure sensor. The devices watch for movement and track the depth of the pond filling at the top of the slide.
The slide has been turned into precise computer models showing depth and volume in vegetation-skinning images created by using a state-of-the-art ground laser technology called lidar, short for light detection and ranging.
Hawkins and his brother, Jarold, haven't seen those images, but they know they have an understanding of that land that goes deeper than digitized measurements. Berry doesn't dismiss that.
'The amount we don't know is more than we do know,' she said.
The experts and the landowners conclude that the water pooling at the top of the slide and now seeping into four smaller ponds below is going to be cutting a new stream channel, but not likely until next spring's runoff.
That is why the Hawkinses know the Forest Service is going to need to start revegetating the barren area as soon as possible and building fences to keep out the approximately 600 head of cattle that normally make their way down that now-unstable draw in the fall. They know irrigation ditches are going to need to be rebuilt and water from that area is going to be a silty mess for a long time.
'We could sure use some help,' Jarold Hawkins said, as he looked out over what used to be a beautiful view along Sugarloaf Peak.
Help came in droves when the mountain moved - a day etched clearly in Slug Hawkins' memory.
Hawkins was feeding his horses early that morning when he heard a loud 'Ssshhhwooosssshhh,' which he thought was a release from a nearby gas well. He couldn't see up the mountain because of the rain and clouds.
He went to irrigate, and when he came back about four hours later, he could see through a break in the clouds that something didn't look right. Two neighbors came to his place about that time to say their irrigation water had stopped, so the three went on four-wheelers to the bottom of the Forest Service boundary and walked up from the end of the trail.
Through the trees, they could see a slide moving their way very slowly. They couldn't see how large it was. They thought it was one of many slides that tumble from the steep sides of the Grand Mesa.
When he got back home, Hawkins called his son Wes, who was in charge of the irrigation system for the area. Wes Hawkins called a friend, Clancey Nichols, who worked for the Mesa County road and bridge department and knew that area as well as the Hawkinses. Clancey's 22-year-old son, Danny, a newly minted geologist, opted to come along.
Slug said the three left on a four-wheeler and in a pickup truck about 3:30 p.m., headed for a ridge where they would be able to see what was sliding below that ridge. Slug Hawkins stayed home, peering up through the clouds every now and then to see whether he could spot them.
He was in the house watching TV when the massive slide let loose. He didn't hear it. He saw it through a parting in the clouds.
He could see where it had slopped over the ridge where his son and the other two men had been. He took off and hiked the three-quarters of a mile up to the ridge.
'I got up there, and it was like looking at the moon,' he said. 'I knew it was over for them, but I couldn't admit it.'
Search-and-rescue crews swarmed the area. No sign of the men or their vehicles has been found even though Slug Hawkins has continued to walk the fringes of the slide where he knows the men are buried.
He will continue to sit at his picnic table and discuss and ponder a slide that is now both a matter of scientific wonder and a grave site.
'Wes played up there as a kid. I never worried about him,' he said. 'I know he is at home there.'
Nancy Lofholm: 970-256-1957, nlofholm@ denverpost.com or twitter.com/nlofholm Entities 0 Name: Hawkins Count: 7 1 Name: Hawkinses Count: 4 2 Name: Forest Service Count: 2 3 Name: Grand Mesa Count: 2 4 Name: Slug Hawkins Count: 1 5 Name: Clancey Count: 1 6 Name: Wes Count: 1 7 Name: Nancy Lofholm Count: 1 8 Name: Mesa County Count: 1 9 Name: Plateau Valley Count: 1 10 Name: COLLBRAN Count: 1 11 Name: Wes Hawkins Count: 1 12 Name: moon Count: 1 13 Name: Colorado Geological Survey Count: 1 14 Name: Danny Count: 1 15 Name: Jarold Hawkins Count: 1 16 Name: Berry Count: 1 17 Name: Jarold Count: 1 18 Name: Clancey Nichols Count: 1 19 Name: Sugarloaf Peak Count: 1 20 Name: Karen Berry Count: 1 21 Name: Melvin Count: 1 22 Name: U.S. Forest Service Count: 1 Related Keywords 0 Name: hawkins Score: 76 1 Name: slide Score: 62 2 Name: hawkinses Score: 40 3 Name: ridge Score: 36 4 Name: slug Score: 35 5 Name: irrigation Score: 31 6 Name: geologist Score: 23 7 Name: mesa Score: 23 8 Name: picnic Score: 22 9 Name: ranch Score: 22 Authors Media Images 0
Post a Comment for "Study of Collbran landslide includes local knowledge with science"