Flight-seeing trip checks out Mount Steele landslide in St. Elias Mountains

A couple from Haines Junction and their pilot might have been the first people to see the aftermath of the massive Mount Steele landslide with their own eyes. 

The landslide was detected seismically earlier this month and pin-pointed with satellite imagery by researchers at Columbia University. Elsabe Kloppers and Martin Laniel think their Oct. 25 flyover might have been the first one. 

"When we flew up to it, our first clue we were getting close was everything looked covered in brown dust, the valley all around," says Kloppers. "It was still sloughing, creating all that dust and mist at the base."

Kloppers and Laniel, owners of the Wanderers Inn Backpacking Hostel in Haines Junction, went on promotional flight last week with Burwash-based Rocking Star Adventures. Kloppers says the flight-seeing company wanted to check out the landslide and asked her and Laniel to go along and take photos. 

On Oct. 11, 45 million tons of rock, snow and ice came thundering off Mount Steele, a 5,067 metre peak in the remote icefields of the St. Elias Mountains, in Kluane National Park and Reserve.

Laniel says he expected the slide to be bigger. 

"When you hear about 45 millions tons, you're thinking it's going to be half of the size of a mountain, and really, at the end of the day, it's just a crevasse. It's just very, very deep."

Parks Canada has not been to site

Kluane National Park and Reserve says there is no reason to visit the site from a visitor safety point of view because Mount Steele is not a typical mountaineering destination.

"Ascent routes typically do not travel through the area where this landslide occurred," Elise Maltin wrote in an email.  

She says about 30 groups have attempted to climb Mount Steele in the past 35 years.