The Hope Slide was the largest landslide ever recorded in Canada. It occurred in the morning hours of 9 January 1965. An earlier, small snowslide had forced four people to stop their vehicles a few miles southeast of the town of Hope, B.C. (two hours east of Vancouver), on a stretch of the Hope-Princeton Highway below Johnson Peak. As those people contemplated waiting for clearing crews or turning around, a small earthquake below the mountain triggered the main slide, which obliterated the mountain's southwestern slope.

The slide buried the victims and their vehicles under a torrent of pulverized rock, mud, and debris 85 metres (nearly 300 feet) thick and 3 kilometres (about 2 miles) wide, which came down the 2000-metre (6000-foot) mountainside, consumed a lake, rode up the other side of the valley, and then rebounded again to slosh up the original slope before settling. Rescue crews only found two of the four dead—the others have remained entombed in the rock, with their cars, since 1965.

The highway has since been rerouted around and over the base of the slide's debris field. Most of the massive scar on the mountain face remains bare rock, without significant growth of trees or other large vegetation. It is quite easily visible from jet aircraft passing overhead.

External Links

• Aerial photo and stereogram (http://www.penmachine.com/photoessays/2004_08_aerial2/hopeslide.html) of the Hope Slide
• B.C. government landslide information (http://www.em.gov.bc.ca/Mining/Geolsurv/Surficial/landslid/)
• Slide! (http://www.knowledgenetwork.ca/know_tool/slide/splash.html), a program on B.C. Knowledge Network
• Views of the Hope Slide (http://www.seethefraservalley.com/hope/slide/slide.htm)