Two debris flow modes on Mount Cayley, British Columbia

Abstract

The 1963 landslide on Mount Cayley, British Columbia, began at the head of Dusty Creek, a small tributary of Turbid Creek, a major creek draining Mount Cayley, and terminated at the present confluence of Dusty and Turbid creeks. About 5 × 106 m3 of partially saturated, columnar-jointed dacite and weak pyroclastic rocks moved 2.4 km downstream. The depletion zone contained three separate blocks. The landslide deposits have distinct layers that can be traced back to similar bedrock units in the undisturbed material, which are three times thicker. The accumulation zone is divided by two gullys into three blocks, which preserve, much thinned, different but overlapping portions of the volcanic stratigraphy. The 1984 rock slide on Avalache Creek, 0.8 km away, involved tuff breccia, tuff lapilli, and tuff, all easily broken. Its main track ran over thick snow and ice on the bottom of the creek. Differences in water content and displaced material led to different flow modes: the 1963 fragments formed laminar flows, which supported comparatively undeformed central plugs; the turbulent 1984 flow's deposits have no distinct layers. The two modes, laminar flow and turbulent flow, also formed different types of landslide dams. Key words: landslide, debris flow, volcano, British Columbia, tuff, lava.